The multi-party election doesn't remove the over arching ideological division, the Left-Right, Liberal-Conservative, Socialist-Captialist and so on, that usually tends to be binary, as the US election is more explicitly. But in practical terms, the first turn of the election is basically the primaries, as it tends to polarize the population in the ideological fields and they will select their candidates in those groups, with very little movement of votes between groups. It can happen that the two candidates for the second turn will have similar ideological positions, and is not uncommon in state governor elections, as is the case for the current election in the State of São Paulo (with two conservatives going for the second turn). But the same happens in the US, Hillary is not strong in the progressive wing of the Democratic party, which tends to favor Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, and most of them would rather not vote than vote to Hillary, even though the alternative is worst. But the fact is that a campaign between a blue dog Democrat (one elected in tipically Red States, and with a more conservative agenda) and any Republican is mostly on the center right side of the ideological spectrum, and has very little positions that satisfy middle class workers and the less privileged segments of the population. So, what this all says is that we will see on October 7th, what would be the results of the US Primaries, and what comes out of it is the two candidates that will be facing each other in the General Election, or in brazilian terms, second turn. It's worth mentioning that in Brazil, all eligible citzens are required to vote, and must justify their absence in case they don't do it, one effect of that is that sometimes the vote casted is invalid, either because the voter didn't choose anyone (Called white vote in Brazil, but that alone sounds racist, better call it Empty) or because he choose someone that is not in the race (Called the Null vote). Invalid votes are not counted in the total votes, which means that their practical effects is to favor whoever ends up winning the election, since that candidate would require less votes to get a good proportion of the population. Elections are also fully done in an electronic form, usign a specially crafted machine, which voters will access in special places designated as voting sessions, and once they are authorized, they go and type the number of their candidate (to nullify your vote you type an invalid number, and sometimes the machine comes with some invalid numbers assigned to famous, but dead, people, such as writers).
So, with no further ado, here is the Cast of our tropical US Presidential Election Parody.
Fernando Haddad, he is from the previously elected party (which is not the ruling party), PT, safe to call Left in most circles, except on the progressive Left. He has been previously mayor of São Paulo, and Minister of Education but is still not widely known in the country, and where he is known, he's not very popular, given the party recent history of impeachment and corruption scandals as well as his low performance with the city's constituents (he lost his reelection campaign for mayor). Outside politics, studied Law, Philosophy and Economy and is or has been a professor and researcher at University of São Paulo. He has very little original ideas on how to make changes to the country that has been doing poorly in most of global indicators and is very indebted, and by alliances he seeks that are very dubious and not coherent with his platform. Has as Vice President an early drop out from the campaign, Manuela D'avilla, which has early made a few proposals in her campaign that may not be followed by Haddad. Haddad has high hopes on Lula's electorate to support him, but even if the candidate was Lula himself, this campaign would be a tough sell, given the whole set of recent events and current political climate.
Haddad will play the role of Hillary Clinton. She was Secretary of State during previous administration, and mostly favors the establishment, many in the party doesn't feel represented by her and won't vote for her on the primary and may not vote or vote third party in case she is chosen as the Democratic candidate. Not only her but the Democratic party has been blamed for poor economic performance and the rise of inequality and taxation, she has been target of investigations as well, and the party had a member impeached in the past. Outside the executive side of politics (some judiciary positions are also elected in the US) she also comes from a background of Law and has been US Attorney (if I'm not mistaken). She runs strongly on an Identity based campaign, running on social issues, immigration and gender and sexual discrimination, but doesn't have a strong background on these areas to support her claim. Had several damaging leaks exposed during her term as Secretary and during her campaign, including the Podesta emails, that spilled suspicions on Obama's administration as well, and traces of rigging in the democratic primary.
Ciro Gomes, this guy has a long past with politics, started early on his twenties in the legislative, but quickly joined the executive becoming mayor of Fortaleza, capital and biggest city of the State of Ceará, which he later became Governor. Had great successes in his career and is well seen by his previous constituents. Still in his public career, was Minister of Finance in the wake of the Real Plan (which is the current currency) and later Minister of National Integration (kind of vague, and not sure what it really entails). Is a Law graduate and practitioner, has previous experience as executive in the private sector and as professor. Presents himself as one of the most prepared candidates, with lengthy explanations on most topics and a platform that promotes worker rights and improvement of quality of life and social justice. He claims that the Financial Capitalists, mainly the Banks and their monopoly, is behind most of the woes of the population including the dismantle of the industrial capacity and commodification of the economy, the favoring of external capital, and the capitalist class in detriment of the people and environment. Advocates for higher taxation of the wealthy and revision of Social Security and current tax system, focusing on removing the volume and complexity of taxes.
Ciro will play Bernie Sanders. It's just logical. They share many common views, and almost the same platform, differently than Bernie, Ciro has started early and got himself more experience with the executive branch, but despite that, I can only mention that Ciro goes deeper in economic debates. Bernie started as mayor of Burlington, in Vermont, at 40 years of age, later followed by years as a House representative for Vermont and now Senator for the same State. He is not a Democrat, despite being on the party shortly to be able to run for the presidential candidacy. He is a strong activist for worker's rights and less interventionism in foreign countries, for guaranteed healthcare and higher education and for taxation of the wealthy and regulation of financial markets. Comes with the audacious goal of changing the Democratic Party from the inside out, by challenging the establishment candidate and with that getting the favor of its large electorate and representation in the House and Senate.
Guilherme Boulos is a new name in Brazil's politics, having in the past got some screen time with his involvement with a Homeless Organization in São Paulo that as part of its strategies uses occupations of uninhabited buildings and unused land. He comes from a middle class family having graduated in Philosophy, followed by Masters in mental health which is the subject of his classes as a professor. As a new name, has no previous position in the government and has just recently joined his party, PSOL. Boulos has all the positions of the Left, including most of the ones presented by Ciro and Haddad and probably is further left in any aspect.
Boulos will play Jill Stein. Jill run last election as a third party candidate, through the Green Party. This was disapproved by most of the Democratic party members and voters, since most Stein's voters would rather vote Democrat than Republican and therefore are accused of "indirectly electing the republicans", as happened with another Green Party candidate in 2000, where his votes helped Bush's victory in Florida against Al Gore, which was a decisive victory. Jill also doesn't have previous positions in the government, and has most of the same agenda as Boulos, such as opening of the democratic system (political reform), improvement of welfare state, education reform and has been involved in activism and demonstrations, including Occupy Wall Street.
Marina Silva, REDE, is quite hard to find a parallel in US, but still has good percentage of the electorate and represents a quite strange mix of positions and groups. She has a strong past, coming from a background of poverty, has been twice Senator for the State of Acre and Minister of the Environment during her time in Haddad's party, PT, but has alliances in very conservative groups and the tragic loss of her campaign partner in the previous election has thrown her previous campaign directly into that ideological group, shaping her party with a weird mix of left and right wing positions.
Marina will play two roles, mostly because of her positions that are in the blurry center region of the political spectrum, she will be as a secondary role Evan McMullin, a former CIA operator that put himself as a possibility and got really good numbers on the State of Utah, which is majorly Mormon and a Republican State, polling higher than Hillary or Trump in that State, but almost unknown outside of it. Her primary role in this election, a candidate from the Republican Primary that also planned to go third party after dropping the primary, John Kasich, governor of Ohio and what most would call a moderate Republican, favors the legalization of Cannabis (as does Marina's choice for Vice President), and has some friendly positions on the environment, at least as far as most conservatives usually tend to go in the subject. The roles she play already forecast her future on this election, she doesn't seem to have a strong grasp of the electorate and if not an early drop in the race, won't have much support in the first turn and will attempt to direct the supporters in the second turn, but as with the characters she plays, it won't probably have much effect.
Henrique Meirelles is current Minister of Finance and has been previously President of the Central Bank, is a wealthy individual and defends most of the positions of the current government, from the same party as himself, MDB. He will play Ben Carson, since he is mostly on the conservative side on issues and has the same slow motion spell on him. They are recognized in their fields as having excellence, but outside of it they tend to perform poorly.
João Amoêdo, NOVO, is another newcomer in the political arena, as is his party, but not from the same background as Boulos, he is a wealthy individual from a powerful and influential family with long history of participation and partnership with the Government. He is an engineer but has worked mostly on the financial area, having been in high positions on a few big banks in the country. His positions are conservative, his economic principles are mostly extracted from neoliberal theory and focuses on stripping State power and curbing its sphere of influence. He will play Carly Fiorina, businesswoman and former CEO of HP, as both share mostly the conservative agenda and have no previous political experience and lots of conflicts of interest at play.
Alvaro Dias, a candidate I honestly know very little about, despite previously being Governor of Paraná, and having good polling results in the South, has presented himself as a conservative candidate, and favors in his positions most of the conservative agenda and current government positions. He will play Rick Perry, also an former governor that I know very little about and that ... well, has conservative positions. One good reason as well is that Rick is target of several memes and other pieces of comedy, which also happens with Alvaro, and both seem to care about looks.
Geraldo Alckmin, Governor of the State of São Paulo, and from PSDB, one of the two major political parties in Brazil (the other is PT), presents himself as a center right candidate, but his party is currently supporting the government and has been promoting the conservative agenda more than any other, especially given its political influence. As happens to Fernando Haddad, his party has been mentioned in many corruption scandals and investigations, but differently than PT, they mostly have not been convicted and the few people arrested have been released by court orders. He has also been Governor during many investigations of corruption in State funded developments, such as subway expansions and highway construction. As most of the candidates supporting the current government, his campaign has very few new proposals for the country, running almost exclusively in defensive campaigns and fiscal discipline.
Alckmin will play Jeb Bush, both are conservative candidates and have strong association with their party in policies, being probably the most obvious status quo candidate. Jeb is from a prestigious political family (well, not to me, but anyway, two presidents is something) and has not been involved personally in major scandals. They both share the same lack of charisma though. Chris Christie could be an option, but I think he is too much a caricature, and Alckmin doesn't seem to fit that. I also think that Fernando Henrique Cardoso, FHC, President from 94 to 2002 and Minister of Finance during the Real plan, has a good and loyal electorate, and works as godfather of Alckmin, promoting him in some areas, but the party has very little electorate in large regions of the country, very little was developed during FHC's terms. Jeb Bush also represents this flag passing ritual, receiving the "blessing" of the previous political figure of the clan, his brother George Bush.
Jair Bolsonaro, last but not least (oh, I wish), is a current House Representative from the State of Rio de Janeiro, in his 6th or 7th term, that even though is there for quite some time has very little legislative activity and usually caucuses with right wing legislators, but his current platform is what has brought him to the top in all recent polls. He is running a very polemic campaign, with many elements of the extreme right in America, such as racism, homophobia, white supremacy, militarism, misogyny and so on. At the same time, he approaches aggressively the neoliberal right, which mostly represents the establishment in Brazil, with promises of fiscal austerity and privatizations of all, if possible, state controlled companies and resources. He does this approach with the right while with the other hand promissing a strong country, with a strong military and overall security forces, and blames most of the woes of the country on the left, which he tends to call Communists, and more especifically on Lula and his party. He has gathered a strong support on Christian communities in general, even on some more left leaning, but most of his support comes from evangelicals, support that extends to legislative members with large electorates (such as Marco Feliciano, representative from São Paulo). He has been on the military, where he reached the rank of Captain and has as his Vice President a retired General.
Jair Bolsonaro will play Donald Trump, a comparison hard to not make, although he is a very culturally adapted Donald Trump, definitely the Oscar should go to him, his character building skills were impressive, he was able to adjust the hate spilling rhetoric of Trump to Brazil's reality, with its higher crime rates and obscene inequality, also he did a great job in understanding and accepting "America First". Finally, is hard to account Bolsonaro's time in Congress as political experience, because he did so little that he is almost a newcomer to politics. And the cherry on top of his characterization is that he is just more of the same, as Trump is. Trump's policies and cabinet choices are the swamp that he promised to get rid of, he gives tax breaks to an elite class while removes social investments and protections, and Jair Bolsonaro already has the alliances to make exactly the same.
There are some other candidates, such as Cabo Daciolo and Eymael (which nobody knows if that is his first or last name, and honestly, nobody cares), and we could try to fill some of the missing roles, such as Chris Christie and even better Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, but none of those left remaining would do a good job on those characters, and also, even though they lasted a little longer than the others in the primaries, they weren't that much of a challenge to Trump's candidacy, only they didn't seem to have figure that out in time.
We all know what happened to the US election, but this is Brazil, and even though we are working hard to make a perfect remake of the election, we are full of surprises and we may end up changing some events, as we did recently by having our "real people, not actor" Jair Bolsonaro hospitalized, after getting stabbed during a campaing rally. He is still in the play and will be back in time for the best scenes, and we sincerely apologize for the missing character on the show, but don't be sad, our own "MAGA hats" cult is strong and alive and they won't let their candidate left behind, fighting until the last minute.
Just as happened in the US Election, it's still early to call winners and losers, but the media is doing its best to do just that. We don't lack the media fever in our sandy beaches, it's a little less noisy than american media, but at the same time there is less alternative voices, so it's overall same ideological positioning of the media but with a smaller volume, probably because we spend way too much time in memes and making all sorts of crazy stuff (there are flash mobs with dancers for some candidates, just like what happened in the impeachment demonstrations). The media has done a good job in bringing Bolsonaro to the spotlight, just like in the US, where the candidate lacked the political alliances and background to promote himself, but had, due to constant exposition of his crazyness, got himself in the center stage, and since behind some eyeballs there is no grey matter, this exposition alone was enough to bump his numbers in the polls. Just like the saying we have, "Speak ill of me, but speak of me".
The Right, at this moment, is orbiting Bolsonaro, and he leads against all his competitors among center and right leaning voters. No changes here with the US Elections, where Trump since day one was leading on all Republican primaries and polls. The anti-establishment rhetoric plays an important role to gather the votes of the young and ill-informed, and of many of those left behind and with nostalgia of past times. It's curious that rhetoric, because he represents the establishment, being a representative for almost 30 years and voting along the same lines as the current government. Other candidates, except Amoêdo, are taking a heavy toll with their previous political roles, and are not considered trustworthy for the anti-establishment wing of the voters. Amoêdo is not performing well, probably because he lacks the more aggressive campaign and charisma of Bolsonaro, even though they seem to defend the same positions in almost every issue. Amoêdo is more moderate when casting opinion in sensitive issues, such as guns, abortion and drugs, and he has no apparent support in the religious communities.
The Left is facing the exact same issue as in the US, so this part of the play is working beautifully (not happily though). Marina has some votes on the left, but as I mentioned, she doesn't have a recent record of opinions and positions that represents this electorate, and they are quickly dropping her for more left leaning candidates, leaving on her base mostly those mild conservatives (Kasich) and some religious folks (McMullin). Boulos will definitely be the Jill Stein of this election, he has no chance whatsoever of winning the election, but since there is no candidate that follows his positions to the strictest, he wants to be the voice of these left behind constituents. His electorate is one of the hardest to accept Ciro or Haddad as alternatives, and may be the difference between which of them will go to the second turn or even if any of them will (remember, there is always the chance of two conservatives in the second turn). Finally, there is the center stage with Ciro and Haddad, Sanders versus Hillary, with most of the same parallels. Haddad is already using the weight of his party, with large time on TV, media exposition and Lula's popularity in some regions, to push his campaign forward, while Ciro moves through the grassroots field, gathering votes in rallies and using the Internet, debates and interviews to spread his message and positions. Also, it's noticeable that Haddad's campaign starts to take some of the projects and ideas from Ciro, willing to get Ciro's potential electorate this way, and some more acceptance from the left if he goes to the second turn.
The second turn may be nasty for Haddad, mostly because of his rejection within the Left, and even if he succeeds, he will have to deal with a Legislature that will most probably be conservative and he has already made alliances that most certainly will ask for political favors once he is elected. The biggest obstacle for Ciro right now is Haddad, and not because of ideological differences, but because the electorate of Haddad is very passionate about his candidacy and see on him the new Lula, not another Dilma (previous President that was removed in a impeachment). To complicate matters, Ciro has chosen as his Vice President, Kátia Abreu, previous Senator for the State of Tocantins and associated with agrobusiness in Brazil, she has been frequent target of criticism from environmental groups and some worker and indigenous rights groups, even opposing legislation that would enhance the fight against modern day slavery (which is mostly old slavery, plus some new ideas). This choice, altough good from a more center leaning strategy, since it embraces a productive sector that is very important to the current economy, is terrible with more environmentally conscious voters, that sees on her a step back in Brazil's environmental agenda, and with horrible timing, since we are still signatories of the Paris accord and Climate Change is a real threat, with Brazil having a center role in avoiding the collapse (agrobusiness is a heavy factor in climate change, added the oil business, deforestation and wildfires). Ciro hasn't put forward any projects, programs or campaign material that target the protection and restoration of the environment, but neither has any that would accelerate its destruction.
Who knows what will happen next, but if our "Real People, Not Actors" follow the script they were given, we can at least be prepared for whatever comes, which in the case of this remake will be even more tragic given our disposition for dramas. But Brazil never disappoints in its surprises and we might as well see in this election the concessions we missed in the previous episode ... hell, we can even watch a military coup in case our tropical Trump doesn't get there, as he (in a stroke of artistic geniality) from his hospital bed is already throwing shade on the elections by claiming that Haddad is going to cheat the electronic system. The population is already following most of the script, with waves of attacks and hacks on social media and the toxic divide of the population in two groups that more and more hate each other. I was almost forgetting to mention the "Lock Her Up" chant, that curiously got upside down in Brazil, the chant there is "Set Him Free", chanted by part of the Left and in this case is directed to Lula, that has been arrested after being convicted of corruption charges.
That's it ... stay tuned for more.
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