{"id":199325,"date":"2018-08-15T15:41:32","date_gmt":"2018-08-15T17:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/?p=199325"},"modified":"2018-08-16T21:36:49","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T23:36:49","slug":"brazil-unstable-democracy-says-political-scientist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/brazil-unstable-democracy-says-political-scientist\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazil is an unstable democracy, says political scientist"},"content":{"rendered":"

S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 Brazil can be characterized as an unstable or a little consensus democracy, according to political scientist Fernando Sch\u00fcler, who gave the lecture \u201cBrazil: elections, democracy and the challenges for the country in 2019\u201d this Wednesday (15) at Walid Yazigi Auditorium in the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce<\/strong> in S\u00e3o Paulo.<\/p>\n

Fernando Sch\u00fcler offered an overview of Brazil\u2019s presidential election campaign, presenting possible scenarios in the case of a runoff election, and explained the context in which the elections are playing out in the country, in a moment of national political instability and with many more people being active in the political debate.<\/p>\n

According to him, democracy has been going through a different moment worldwide. \u201cDemocracy is polarized, to a large extent this is going on because of technology. 30 years, 20 years ago you had ten thousand people engaged in the debate, economists, columnists, journalists, politicians. Currently, you see tens of millions of people,\u201d said Sch\u00fcler.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Fernando Sch\u00fcler spoke at the Arab Chamber<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This type of democracy is louder, more critical and in it citizens have more power, according to the political scientist. \u201cPolitical parties lost most of its function and today every person has the means to self-represent themselves and to self-organize,\u201d he said, mentioning the online mobilizations for demonstrations at Paulista avenue.<\/p>\n

According to Sch\u00fcler, this new phase came to last. \u201cDemocracy won\u2019t ever return to what it was in the past, it will be louder, more unstable, consensus will be harder to achieve,\u201d he said. Sch\u00fcler says that the difficulty for achieving consensus regarding reforms in Brazil is the tone of democracy. He pointed out that the scenario is made worse by the Brazilian context of political tension due to the impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff (PT) and the economic crisis.<\/p>\n

Sch\u00fcler mentioned a piece by British magazine The Economist<\/em>, published before the impeachment, that stated that the overthrow of the president would \u201cpoison\u201d Brazilian politics. The political scientist described the impeachment process as an exercise by democracy and by Brazilian institutions but said that it indeed poisoned Brazilian politics even further.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe impeachment didn\u2019t arrive here by chance, Brazil was already riding a process of ungovernability, of fragmentation of political parties, there was a brutal crisis already, the Brazilian economy had declined 3.8% in 2015, it was in route to a fall that would eventually reach 7% in two years, it wasn\u2019t plucked out of the sky, but it added even more toxins to Brazilian life, and we live in a country of little consensus, what I call an unstable democracy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

According to Sch\u00fcler, Brazil sees little consensus in issues that he believed to be solved, such as democratic rules. He mentioned an article written by former president, currently in jail, Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva (PT) in The New York Times<\/em>, in which he declares that there\u2019s an ongoing coup d\u2019\u00e9tat in the country. \u201cA democracy of little consensus is like this, it has powerful leaders of the political and party system that question and pressure the rules of the game all the time. This happens in the left and in parts of the right, also,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He mentioned other areas experiencing little consensus in Brazil, such as the need for fiscal responsibility and said that there\u2019s very little consensus on the country\u2019s modernization process. But, according to Sch\u00fcler, the Brazilian democracy is not at risk. \u201cWe are having a moment of unrest, of instability, of discord, of little consensus, and we have to overcome it, and Brazil has the institutions to do it,\u201d said the political scientist.<\/p>\n

Elections<\/strong><\/p>\n

After talking about democracy and providing an overview of the current fragmented party system in Brazil, the political scientist showed an election poll conducted by the institute RealTime Big Data. In it, the candidate Jair Bolsonaro (PSC) leads the presidential race with 21%, followed by Marina Silva (Rede), with 11%, and Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB), with 9%.<\/p>\n

In a polling where people have to come up with their candidates\u2019 name spontaneously, Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva is the front-runner with 17%, followed by Bolsonaro with 14%, and Ciro Gomes (PDT), with 2%. According to Sch\u00fcler, the fact that Bolsonaro has similar numbers in both polls shows that his constituents are not undecided.<\/p>\n

The political scientist said that the election hasn\u2019t began yet in Brazil and that the pre-elections debate has been taking place only among the higher education group, which accounts for 9.5% of the total and are people that have been experiencing the election via social media. \u201cThe people still hasn\u2019t entered the campaign,\u201d he said. According to Sch\u00fcler, during the pre-campaign only Lula and Bolsonaro show up.<\/p>\n

Sch\u00fcler says that the rest of the population should dive into the campaign with the beginning of the paid TV and radio political ads, from which the candidate Alckmin achieved almost 44% of total air time. \u201cHe will have Alckmin in the morning, Alckmin during lunch, Alckmin in the afternoon, Alckmin in the evening, Alckmin stating that he lowered crime rates in S\u00e3o Paulo, that he built Rodoanel,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Hannun: a lecture in a special moment for the elections<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to the political scientist, candidate Ciro Gomes has been backed into a corner, isolated by the left from one side and without signaling a movement to the center from the other. \u201cLula, from Curitiba, continues to be a great operator within Brazilian politics,\u201d said Sch\u00fcler. The scientist mentioned Bolsonaro as a new fact in Brazilian politics, explaining that he wasn\u2019t judging if he\u2019s a good or bad candidate, and placing him as an option for the conservative electorate in Brazil.<\/p>\n

Sch\u00fcler said that Brazilian conservatives usually would, begrudgingly, give their votes to PSDB. \u201cThere has always been a significant part of Brazilian society that is morally conservative, we have 30% of an evangelical population, and in their rights, that don\u2019t like to discuss abortion, that have restriction to cultural issues in general, that don\u2019t like gender ideology in schools, and that is valid, I\u2019m not saying that it\u2019s right or wrong. This sector wasn\u2019t represented politically,\u201d he said about Bolsonaro\u2019s constituents.<\/p>\n

To the political scientist, the Brazilian election will come to three possibilities: Fernando Haddad (PT), Bolsonaro and Alckmin. He believes that PT will keep Lula as a candidate down to their final resort on September 17. Then, the party will present Haddad as the candidate. Haddad would draw Lula\u2019s votes, according to Sch\u00fcler. \u201cIt could work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In a runoff election between Alckmin and Haddad, the votes from Bolsonaro would go to PSDB and in a runoff election between Bolsonaro and Haddad, the Alckmin votes would go to Bolsonaro. According to the political scientist, the question is to where the votes from the left would go in a dispute between Alckmin and Bolsonaro.<\/p>\n

Fernando Sch\u00fcler ended his lecture stating that Brazil has today a stronger civil society, with groups to the left and more conservative ones, and that this is the hope for a Congress overhaul.<\/p>\n

The Arab Chamber\u2019s president, Rubens Hannun, opened the event. He said that the lecture was taking place in a special moment, the last day for parties to register their candidates por the presidency of Brazil. At the audience were members of the Arab Chamber\u2019s board, Management students of the Maranh\u00e3o State University and the general public.<\/p>\n

Translated by S\u00e9rgio Kakitani <\/strong><\/p>\n

Rodrigo Rodrigues\/Arab Chamber<\/div>\n
Rodrigo Rodrigues\/C\u00e2mara \u00c1rabe<\/div>\n
Rodrigo Rodrigues\/C\u00e2mara \u00c1rabe<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fernando Sch\u00fcler gave a lecture at the Arab Chamber and talked about the new juncture of democracy in the country, with stronger participation but little consensus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1455,"featured_media":199299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3066],"tags":[3807,4428,3786,4427,4423],"class_list":{"0":"post-199325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-society","8":"tag-2018-elections","9":"tag-elections","10":"tag-fernando-schuler","11":"tag-presidential-candidates","12":"tag-schuler"},"wps_subtitle":"Fernando Sch\u00fcler gave a lecture at the Arab Chamber and talked about the new juncture of democracy in the country, with stronger participation but little consensus. ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1455"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}