They will finally take place. Initially scheduled for October and postponed due to a pandemic, municipal elections will therefore be organized on Sunday, November 15 in Brazil. In the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, it will be nothing less than the first electoral test of the Jair Bolsonaro era, two years after the arrival of the far right to power in Brasilia.
Around 147 million voters will have to nominate mayors and municipal councils in some 5,500 towns in this country. The election will be played in the first round in almost all of the municipalities, a second round being scheduled for November 29 only in the 95 cities of the country with a population of over 200,000 inhabitants.
Pandemic, economic crash, massive dropout, rising inequalities … the task of the newly elected will be immense. And yet, it is a very dull campaign which ends in Brazil. Eight months after the start of the epidemic, the Latin American giant is still struggling with the Covid-19 (163,000 official victims). Result: no meetings, little debate, and even less excitement. To avoid contamination, the campaign took place mainly on social networks.
Bloody campaign
The ballot certainly had its share of shady candidacies – a classic. Among the contenders for the post of municipal councilor, there was a “Chloroquine Captain” in Rio, a “Mario Smoke” (promarijuana) in Recife or a green Power Ranger in Minas Gerais. Beyond folklore, 2020 was also, far from the cameras, a bloody campaign. According to the Center for the Study of Security and Citizenship, 82 activists and candidates have been murdered since the start of the year.
A sign of political life which is gradually opening up to diversity, a majority of candidates for the post of mayor or municipal councilor who have declared themselves this year are black or mixed race (51% out of 526,000 applicants) and the country has never had so many women candidates (34% of the total). The number of soldiers has, meanwhile, jumped by 12.5% compared to 2016 (some posing weapon in hand on their posters) and that of evangelical pastors by 34%, according to the newspaper’s counts. Correio Braziliense. Proof that a conservative and security wave is indeed sweeping over Brazilian society.
Will local elections allow national lessons to be learned? President Jair Bolsonaro invested very little in the campaign and did everything to avoid nationalizing the ballot. The head of state, who has championed the economy and the reopening of businesses, has so far emerged strengthened from the Covid crisis, with record popularity, fluctuating between 37% and 40% of ‘favorable opinions. ” Bolsonaro did not want to spoil all this by engaging head-on in the countryside, where he could only lose feathers ”, summarizes the political scientist Paulo Baia, professor at the University of Rio de Janeiro.
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