Brazil Election Results: Bolsonarismo Shows Its Strength and the Brazilian Congress Will Continue with a Conservative Majority | International

The next president of Brazil will have to govern with a clearly conservative National Congress. If the one chosen in the second round is Lula da Silva, it will be frankly difficult for him. Bolsonaro's formation, the Liberal Party (PL), will have the largest bench in the Chamber of Deputies, with 99 seats. The lower house has 513 seats, but for Lula's Workers' Party (PT) it will be almost impossible to build a majority, since among the dozens of parties with representation, the majority will be on the margin that goes from the center to the extreme. right.

Although the left can score a few points in the field of minority representation (the first trans women deputies have been elected and the only indigenous deputy to date, Joênia Wapichana, will have several companions), the truth is that they are an exception to the rule. Congress will continue to be majority male, white and right-wing.

Bolsonaro has managed to place many of his own in the legislative branch. Among the new representatives of the right, there will be, for example, the former Minister of Health Eduardo Pazuello, an Army general whose management of the pandemic was widely criticized, but who has become the most voted deputy in the state of Rio, with almost 200,000 votes. Another of the most voted was the former Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles, famous for having dismantled the environmental control bodies and stimulating illegal deforestation in the Amazon.

In the Senate, which was renewing a third of its seats, Bolsonaro's party will also have the largest bench, 14 of 81. The president managed to place eight more senators than he had until now, and the Senate will also be full of former senior government charges. The until recently vice president, General Antonio Hamilton Mourão, won his seat, as did the controversial former minister of the Damares Alves Family (an evangelical pastor remembered for the phrase "boys wear blue, girls in pink"), the former minister of Agriculture Tereza Cristina da Costa, one of the most famous faces of the powerful rural lobby, or the former Minister of Science Marcos Pontes. The former judge who sentenced Lula and later served as Bolsonaro's minister, Sérgio Moro, also entered. Another central figure of Operation Lava Jato, the main factor of wear and tear on the Brazilian left in recent years, also triumphed on Sunday night. Prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol will be a federal deputy. His vote in the state of Paraná was symbolic because he surpassed the president of the PT, Gleisi Hoffmann, in votes.

In the gubernatorial elections, the right has also swept. Of the 27 states that Brazil has, only three have already been defined for Lula's PT this Sunday. Another 11 will be in the hands of the right, not necessarily Bolsonarista. The rest will measure forces in the second round. In São Paulo, the most populous state and economic engine of the country, the former Minister of Mines and Energy of Bolsonaro, Tarcísio de Freitas broke the electoral forecasts and surpassed the PT member Fernando Haddad, Lula's dolphin, and the two will see each other again faces on October 30, with rather gloomy prospects for the left. In Rio de Janeiro, it will not be necessary to vote again: the Bolsonarista Claudio Castro did not notice the corruption scandals that flutter around him and swept the candidate supported by Lula and has already been re-elected. The state of Minas Gerais, the second most populous and which usually defines what happens in the country as a whole, will once again be in the hands of Romeu Zema, also a conservative. In 2018 he supported Bolsonaro, although lately he declared himself neutral.

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