Two months ago Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, stood before a sea of supporters in his nation’s capital and used a phallic mantra to declare himself politically “unfloppable”.
But on Sunday Bolsonaro suffered a chastening defeat by his leftwing foe Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in their country’s make-or-break presidential election.
As Lula’s triumph was confirmed, hundreds of thousands of supporters flooded São Paulo’s streets to celebrate Bolsonaro’s sudden loss of potency.
“The unfloppable flopped! The unfloppable flopped!” bellowed Gil Alvarenga, a 37-year-old activist from Brazil’s landless movement, as he bounded through the crowds waving the group’s red flag.
Experts say the story of how Brazil’s leader went flaccid involves a litany of outrages, ineptitudes and errors committed during a chaotic four-year reign that saw nearly 700,000 Covid deaths, tens of millions plunged into poverty, and South America’s largest economy become an international pariah notorious for Amazon annihilation.
“He was a bad president who is being punished for being a bad president,” said José Roberto de Toledo, a political columnist for the news website UOL, who thought Bolsonaro’s clumsy handling of the economy was ultimately what sealed his fate.
It is also the story of how moderate, pro-democracy forces finally united behind Lula to evict Brazil’s extremist leader in Sunday’s showdown.
“It was a really important moment of unity,” said the political journalist Consuelo Dieguez, noting how influential centrists such as the former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the senator Simone Tebet swung behind Brazil’s former leftist president.
Key to the success of what Lula called their “immense democratic movement” was the president-elect himself – a shrewd deal-maker and political colossus who has towered over Brazilian politics since the 1980s and left office after two terms in 2010 with approval ratings nearing 90%.
Millions of Brazilians now loathe Lula, thanks to corruption scandals involving his Workers’ party (PT). But enduring adoration, particularly in the north-east, where Lula was born into poverty and received 69.3% of the vote to Bolsonaro’s 30.6%, was crucial to his victory.
“Bolsonaro used every outrageous trick you can possibly imagine in the final stretch of the campaign,” said Renato Rovai, the editor of the progressive magazine Revista Fórum, flagging billions of dollars of welfare payments designed to seduce poor voters and a suspected attempt at voter suppression by federal highway police on election day.
Yet the 77-year-old leftist’s strength was such that he still prevailed, with more than 60m votes to Bolsonaro’s 58m. “That might seem like a small margin, but it’s a heroic victory,” said Rovai. “Only Lula could have won this.”
Rovai compared Lula’s “victory over fascism” to a football match: “It doesn’t matter if you win five-nil or on penalties – you’re still champion.”
Bolsonaro’s allies have identified a series of scapegoats in the wake of his drubbing.
One is the finance minister, Paulo Guedes, who recently undermined Bolsonaro’s flawed claims to have led a corruption-free government by admitting: “We steal less [than our opponents].”
Another is Roberto Jefferson, the gun-toting Bolsonaro ally who is in jail facing attempted murder charges after attacking federal police on the eve of the vote with grenades and a rifle.
Carla Zambelli, a far-right congresswoman who was filmed chasing a black journalist with a gun in her hand just hours before the election, has also been blamed for alienating moderate voters.
But perhaps no one shoulders more responsibility than Bolsonaro himself.
Dieguez believed the pro-gun president’s relentlessly aggressive and undemocratic rhetoric had left millions of voters frazzled and desperate for change. “People don’t want this kind of regime in Brazil … People are exhausted. A good chunk of the population could no longer bear this,” she said.
Such was the desire for change that even a politically charged tsunami of welfare payments and loans failed to turn the election around. “He moved heaven and earth … to win this election – and he failed,” Dieguez said.
Toledo said such “electoral fraud” – coupled with a “barbaric” fake news blitz – had unquestionably cost Lula votes. Lula won the first round by more than 6m votes and prevailed on Sunday by only 2m. But Bolsonaro’s offensive had still flopped. Why? “Because his government was dreadful,” Toledo said.
Paulo Celso Pereira, an executive editor at the newspaper O Globo, said Bolsonaro’s ruin had been caused by the same social media revolution that catapulted him to power in 2018.
As president, Bolsonaro churned out countless hours of live broadcasts containing nearly all of the outrageous comments that Lula’s campaign propaganda then used against him.
They included absurd and insensitive outbursts at the height of Brazil’s Covid catastrophe, when Bolsonaro imitated coronavirus victims gasping for air and claimed vaccines turned recipients into alligators. Days before the election more damaging footage emerged in which Bolsonaro said he had felt a “spark” with a group of 14 and 15-year-old Venezuelan girls who he falsely accused of being prostitutes.
“Bolsonaro is a new type of politician, a little like [Donald] Trump, a politician who is in a constant state of hyper-exposure - [and] you expose yourself for better, but also for worse,” Pereira said.
“As it was with Trump, the machine that elevated him is the same machine that ultimately made people tire of him.”
As Bolsonaro licks his wounds, thoughts are turning to what comes next for a radical populist who has just lost his first election since becoming a member of congress in 1991.
Many opposition figures hope he will face trial for a slew of crimes they accuse him of committing, including his alleged role in hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths and his fake news-fuelled attacks on Brazil’s young democracy.
“He must be held to account and pay for what he did,” said Henrique Vieira, a progressive pastor and congressman-elect.
Toledo said it was impossible to predict what, if any, sanctions Bolsonaro might suffer after losing power and presidential immunity – the answer was likely to depend more on politics than the law.
Toledo suspected Bolsonaro would remain an important political figure, despite lacking a political party of his own. Since entering politics three decades ago, Bolsonaro has hopped between nine different parties. “There’s one big difference between Bolsonaro and Trump, which is that Bolsonaro doesn’t have a party. Trump managed to co-opt the Republican party.” Bolsonaro had not achieved the same with the Liberal party (PL) of which he is currently part.
Dieguez saw storm clouds gathering on Bolsonaro’s horizon. Already he was being forsaken by key allies, including the rightwing governors of Minas Gerais and São Paulo and the president of the lower house, Arthur Lira. “Even Silas Malafaia has given Lula his blessing,” Dieguez said of the influential televangelist who was one of Bolsonaro’s biggest cheerleaders but is now praying for Lula. “He’s alone.”
Dieguez believed Bolsonaro would return to the extremist fringes of politics where he made his name as a pro-dictatorship agitator.
“He’s a political dwarf. He always was – and that’s what he will go back to being … In four years I think he’ll be hardly anyone,” she said.
Bolsonaro supporters remain defiant, claiming their leader will seek to return to the presidency at the next election in four years’ time. “The path to 2026 starts today,” the outgoing Bolsonarista congressman Márcio Tadeu de Lemos tweeted this week.
Whatever happens, Bolsonaro’s detractors are currently in a seventh heaven of elation and relief.
“A big struggle lies ahead … but there’s light at the end of the tunnel after so much darkness,” said Luciano Andrey Antunes da Silva, a 42-year-old actor, as he commemorated Bolsonaro’s downfall at the heart of São Paulo.
Four years ago Silva stood on the same spot, fruitlessly begging voters not to vote Bolsonaro. On Sunday he was dancing to a dictatorship-era samba that became the soundtrack of resistance to the unfloppable firebrand who this week finally flopped.
“I feel wonderful,” the actor beamed as fireworks exploded overhead. “Tomorrow is a new day.”
