This week I read an article about Brazil and it’s recent presidential election. This article helps break down the elction in terms people can understand and also helped to explain why the election ended the way it did. As everyone knows now, Balsonaro, the radical right-wing canidate, won the election in Brazil, with 46% of the votes. Now I was especially wondering why a growing country with a booming economy would elect a canidate so close to macho and homophobic ideals and who is such a big supporter of dictatorship. However there are many reasons behind it. One being about the canidate Balsonaro ran against. Fernado Haddad was the main rival Balsonaro was running against, but Haddad had no chance to the growing popularity of the right and wasn’t a strong enough canidate. However months before the election the tables were turned. A former president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, decided to go into politics again and happened to be leading in the polls against Balsonaro for a long time. All the predictions were pointing to the left-wing leader Lula winning the election. Although that obviously did not happen. The reason for that is because Lula was had been involved in the Lava Jato scandal, which is an investigation that found money from the state oil company, called Petrobras, was taking bribes to and from politicians. If Lula hadn’t been caught in this scandal, he would have received 8 million dollars in gift and conference payments. However, when tried in court, the canidate had surrendered to serve a 12 year sentence for corruption and money laundering.
After Lula took himself out of the election, Balsonaro had a relatively strong chance of winning. It really makes sense. Even though the people of Brazil were behind Lula and what he stood for, after the people found out what he had been convicted of, they wanted a president far from Lula. Which is why it made sense for Balsonaro to gain so many votes so fast.