{"id":776771,"date":"2022-08-16T15:13:44","date_gmt":"2022-08-16T15:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2022\/08\/bernie-sanders-jair-bolsonaro-lula-democracy-international-elections\/"},"modified":"2022-08-16T16:45:03","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T16:45:03","slug":"bernie-to-bolsonaro-stop-undermining-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/08\/16\/bernie-to-bolsonaro-stop-undermining-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernie to Bolsonaro: Stop Undermining Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

With the leftist Lula set to win Brazil\u2019s presidency, far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro is sowing doubts about the election process. So now, Bernie Sanders is putting Bolsonaro on notice and insisting the US oppose any government that takes power illegitimately.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks in Pontiac, Michigan on July 29, 2022. (Bill Pugliano \/ Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

On November 8, 2019, former Brazilian president Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva was released from prison after serving over five hundred days on dubious corruption charges that have since been dropped. Lula\u2019s imprisonment had galvanized much of the international left, including many of its most recognizable figures. Jeremy Corbyn, Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon, Noam Chomsky, Argentine president Alberto Fern\u00e1ndez all expressed enthusiastic support for Lula during his incarceration. His most vocal supporter in the US government during that dark time was, perhaps unsurprisingly, Senator Bernie Sanders.<\/p>\n

Sanders has long championed the kind of working-class political project that Lula led for decades as the national face of the Workers\u2019 Party (PT), which governed Brazil from 2003 until 2016. \u201cDuring his presidency,\u201d Bernie tweeted<\/a> upon Lula\u2019s release from prison, \u201cLula da Silva oversaw huge reductions in poverty and remains Brazil\u2019s most popular politician. I stand with political and social leaders across the globe who are calling on Brazil\u2019s judiciary to release Lula and annul his conviction.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a remarkable political turnaround, Lula now seems poised<\/a> to win the presidential election this October, besting the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in every poll taken this year. And once again, Sanders is lending his voice to a growing chorus of observers in Brazil and abroad concerned about the fate of Brazilian democracy.<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro has been all but announcing his intentions to subvert Brazilian democracy for months. In addition to calling for a greater military role in the vote-counting process, he has openly debased his country\u2019s electoral institutions in the hopes of throwing a race that does not currently favor him into disarray. On July 18, he convened foreign diplomats stationed in Brazil and expounded on absurd and already debunked conspiracy theories about vulnerabilities in Brazil\u2019s voting system. Thanks to Bolsonaro, in Brazil, like the United States, the idea that the voting system is routinely manipulated by corrupt officials and unscrupulous partisans has become a delusion of the right-wing hive mind. This cynical strategy has produced actual violence and could well lead to more.<\/p>\n

Last month, Sanders and key staffers met with a delegation of Brazilian activists who urged Congress to pay attention to Bolsonaro\u2019s actions and the presidential campaign in the world\u2019s fourth-largest democracy. The visit was organized by the Washington Brazil Office<\/a> (WBO), a new progressive think tank. (Full disclosure: I am a faculty fellow of the WBO and coeditor of its weekly election newsletter.)<\/p>\n

Sanders has since said<\/a> he will present a \u201cSense of the Senate\u201d resolution after Congress is back in session next month to demonstrate \u201csupport for a free and fair election and call on the U.S. to break ties with Brazil if it\u2019s led by an illegitimate regime.\u201d The visiting activists, who work in areas like environmental protection, LGBTQ rights, indigenous resistance, and racial justice, also met with Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin, a vocal opponent of the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.<\/p>\n

Predictably, Bolsonaro supporters are decrying the WBO as a puppet of George Soros and \u2014 even more cynically given the US history of backing right-wing coups in the region \u2014 a fresh attempt at election manipulation by Washington. Still, Sanders seems to recognize the delicate nature of a US politician commenting on an election abroad. Asked why he is pushing \u201ca non-binding resolution when he could put forward a bill with more teeth,\u201d as Politico <\/i>put it, Sanders replied that \u201cthis is a start . . . it\u2019s important for the people of Brazil to know we\u2019re on their side, on the side of democracy and we can go further.\u201d The senator is surely wary of playing into Bolsonaro\u2019s self-victimizing narrative that he is being targeted by a nefarious cabal of international leftists.<\/p>\n

But solidarity is not imperialism \u2014 it is its antithesis. \u201cIt would be unacceptable for the United States to recognize and work with a government that actually lost the election,\u201d Bernie argued after the meeting organized by the WBO. \u201cIt would be a disaster for the people of Brazil, and it would send a horrific message to the entire world about the strength of democracy.\u201d With Lula comfortably ahead in the polls, there is little ambiguity in what Bernie is saying: the former president \u2014 who left office in 2011 with an approval rating in the eighties \u2014 should be allowed take power if so elected.<\/p>\n

In a pleasant surprise, the Biden administration appears to be on the same page. In May, Reuters reported<\/a> that CIA director William Burns explicitly urged top Brazilian officials to stop questioning their country\u2019s ability to carry out a free and fair election. That the CIA would apparently weigh in on the side of democracy struck many as a welcome shift from its long history of supporting right-wing autocrats around the world. Others found the news either unconvincing, self-serving, or ridiculous.<\/p>\n

The point, however, is not that the CIA are suddenly \u201cthe good guys,\u201d as some skeptical commentators put it disbelievingly. It\u2019s that the CIA \u2014 and, by extension, the Washington establishment \u2014 currently sees no benefit to its interests in President Jair Bolsonaro\u2019s antidemocratic meddling. That\u2019s objectively good news not only for the Brazilian left, but the vitality of Brazilian democracy.<\/p>\n

There is a broad front emerging against Bolsonaro, both in Brazil<\/a> and internationally, and it will have to continue from now, during the campaign, through Brazil\u2019s inauguration day on January 1, 2023. Sanders, a lifelong champion of progressive and left-wing causes abroad, is a natural partner in this struggle. His forthcoming resolution is a welcome reminder that these bonds of solidarity must be built and maintained in union halls, international left organizations, and yes, even the corridors of power in Washington.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n \n\n\n

This post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On November 8, 2019, former Brazilian president Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva was released from prison after serving over five hundred days on dubious corruption charges that have since been dropped. Lula\u2019s imprisonment had galvanized much of the international left, including many of its most recognizable figures. Jeremy Corbyn, Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon, Noam Chomsky, Argentine president [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2989,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776771"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2989"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776771"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":776772,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776771\/revisions\/776772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}