Tomorrow, people will be forced to decide whether to vote for what one group of voters is calling a “madman” (Jair Bolsonaro) and another group of voters often refer to as “a mafia” (the PT or Workers’ Party).<\/p>\n
There is no least of these worst choices \u00a0\u2013 they are both appalling. It is an anti-candidate election; the winner will be the candidate voters reject less, not the one viewed to be the better choice. It\u2019s hard to predicate a solid democracy on a contest between \u201cnot him\u201d and \u201cnot that party\u201d, but that\u2019s what Brazilian politics has come down to at the current juncture. The question is whether voters are willing to forgive the PT for its corruption and mismanagement \u2013 for which it has been conspicuously unrepentant \u2013 or whether they will take a chance on an insider whose extreme views give him the semblance of an outsider, with no consistent or admirable voting record during seven legislative terms, and a party with no clear roots or program.<\/p>\n
For this election, voters can thank Brazil\u2019s mad party system<\/a>, a system with a goodly one-third more parties than the world\u2019s second maddest party system \u2013 Indonesia’s. To maintain itself in power and get anything through the legislature, the PT bought votes in Congress (as verified by guilty verdicts in the Mensal\u00e3o<\/em> Trial<\/a>\u00a0[pt here]<\/a>), stole public money, and sold cashflow positions in Petrobras and other parts of the Brazilian state to unscrupulous allies (as verified by Lava Jato indictments).<\/p>\n To make itself even less appealing to moderate, centrist voters, the PT originally paired its current presidential candidate, Fernando Haddad, to a running mate in prison. Regardless of whether Lula is innocent, he is a convicted felon under Brazilian law and should have never attempted to run for election. The maneuver was unquestionably disrespectful of Brazil\u2019s institutions and it was a ploy that ultimately failed. Instead of admitting guilt and uniting under a candidate of the center-left (e.g. Ciro Gomes) who could bring together center and left \u2013 and easily defeat Bolsonaro \u2013 Lula and the PT fell victim to hubris. They are reaping just desserts and will\u00a0likely lose the election.\u00a0 The fallout of the center-left has done a grave disservice to Brazilian democracy – no matter who wins the election.<\/p>\n Take a close look, and the logic of the party system thesis is clear. Bolsonaro came out of nowhere because he was able to hijack a party in a mostly party-less party system (parties, parties everywhere, and not a pittance of a party). The PT played by the rules generated by extreme multiparty fragmentation – buying votes from unreliable allies – and consequently finds itself on the brink of a historic rout.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tomorrow, people will be forced to decide whether to vote for what one group of voters is calling a “madman” (Jair Bolsonaro) and another group of voters often refer to as “a mafia” (the PT or Workers’ Party). There is no least of these worst choices \u00a0\u2013 they are both appalling. It is an anti-candidate Read more about Brazil’s Next President – “O Maluco” v. “A M\u00e1fia” (The Madman v. The Mafia)<\/span>[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1218,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[162,5,145,1],"tags":[178,13,148,179,180],"class_list":["post-1215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-corruption","category-politics","category-rule-of-law","category-uncategorized","tag-bolsonaro","tag-brazil","tag-lula","tag-presidential-election","tag-pt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1602,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions\/1602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}