By Luis Alemany

Of the eleven candidates for the Presidency of Brazil in the first round, seven of them did not collect even 1% of the popular will and the highest number registered only reached 0.51% of the total votes.

In these exciting and dangerous times that the whole of humanity is living, modern democratic societies, from the oldest to the youngest, are threatened by the impoverishing political dialectic of extremes.

In South America, after a 20th century plagued by dictatorial regimes, only recently, between the 1980s and early 1990s, democratic societies emerged or re-emerged.

And in the case of Brazil, democracy resurfaced strongly only in 1985. Historical experience teaches us that democracy is a fragile system and that it is not enough for the people to be able to express themselves freely in electoral instances, if said processes are not  accompanied by a true construction of the institutionality that achieves an authentic separation of the powers of the State.

A change of era as profound as human societies are experiencing, produces a lot of confusion and delayed phenomena that we thought had been overcome.

A new Renaissance?

Modern democratic societies are experiencing transformations as profound as those known in the Renaissance era, more than half a millennium ago.

After the first Industrial Revolution, for a few years, starting with the fourth Industrial Revolution, a significant mutation in the mode of production is taking place, configuring social sectors that are very different from those of yesteryear.

The great economic powers were based on the amount of human physical forces, to occupy the jobs that the industries were creating. Now those physical forces are being replaced by people trained to work on robotics, artificial intelligence, blockchain, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, the internet of things, 3D printing, and autonomous vehicles.

Hence what -and very particularly-, for the development of democratic societies, based on an authentic separation of powers, this alone is not enough, but is accompanied, at present, by an educational system that helps to raise the culture of people, according to the new productive instruments, emphasizing the most impoverished sectors, accumulated by so many millennia of postponement and exploitation.

Although the most advanced intellectuals and pedagogues in democratic societies, since the beginning of the second Industrial Revolution, at the end of the 19th century, were very clear that the most impoverished popular sectors would only find a vehicle for social advancement creating educational systems that the entire population had access. That is why the need to reform the old educational systems is now so urgent. preparing people to live actively and creatively in societies very different from those of the past.

Changes in today’s world are getting faster. This has been understood in societies that until very recently were among the poorest in the world and by carrying out profound educational reforms, preparing people for their insertion into today’s world, have managed to overcome millenary poverty, as has happened in the Southeast Asian. These are also the cases of South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, after the Second World War, as well as Finland, which, until well into the seventies of the last century, its inhabitants were the least qualified workforce that found work in the thriving Sweden of those times.

That and no other is the way for democratic societies to be governed by the common sense of their members, sheltering them from their enemies and the impoverishing dialectic of extremes, leaving behind the old aphorism that «common sense is less common of the senses”, making them more and more free and fair.

Brazilian dilemmas

And going back to the recent Brazilian electoral experience, in the first round, it seemed to be threatened by this extreme dialectic, but it was conditioned -due to its meager difference- to win the centrist vote that the most sensible and better educated candidates obtained, located in third and fourth place in the popular vote. It is very true that they, added together, obtained only 7.20% of the support of the voters, but that is the most important percentage of voters that the two candidates with the most votes would dispute, to triumph in the ballot.

Among the overwhelming majorities collected by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with 48.43% and Jair Bolsonaro with 43.20%, third place was obtained by Simone Tebet with 4.16% and in fourth place Ciro Gomes with 3, 04%.

Simone Tebet, lawyer, professor, writer and Federal Senator since 2015, expressed, after casting her vote: “Unfortunately, we saw that ideological polarization contaminated the soul of the Brazilian people. Our candidacy proposed exactly to take the middle path, that is, with balance, with moderation, with dialogue, bringing proposals and real solutions to the real problems of Brazil”. “Simone Tebet: the female aplomb that surprises the Brazilian elections”, headlined the Spanish newspaper El País (Madrid), after the first round of the Brazilian elections.

Ciro Gomes, lawyer and university professor, has been Mayor, Minister with two different presidents -of the Treasury under the presidency of Itamar Franco and of National Integration under the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and one of his rivals in this election-, and has even reached to be governor of the state of Ceará. “Lula and Bolsonaro are the sides of the coin of mediocrity of an unscrupulous political class”, said Gomes, who already in 2018, in an interview with Folha de Sao Paulo said that he was “miserably betrayed” by Lula and “his minions”.

Simone Tebet and Ciro Gomes were two oddballs on the Brazilian electoral map, it is true, but, due to the equanimity shown, their voters became a decisive minority. And faced with such dramatic false political opposition, to decide on the ballot, both opted to support Lula da Silva’s candidacy.

Unlike his opponent, Lula da Silva had already managed to shape his presidential formula with one of the main center-right political referents: Geraldo Alckmin, a member of Opus Dei and a noted supporter, in the past, of the so-called neoliberal ideological currents. Alckmin was a successful governor of the State of São Paulo -2011-2018-, as was Lula da Silva during his presidencies, but both ended up accused of scandalous acts of corruption. Now, they are both in their seventies and hopefully they have learned from so many mistakes and horrors committed, when they were younger. That is what can explain why, said formula, gathered the support of one of the greatest statesmen who governed the Federative State of Brazil: Fernando Henrique Cardoso and who transferred the presidential investiture to Lula da Silva on January 1, 2003.

In addition, this formula also received, before the first round, the support of one of the best educated and the first Afro-Brazilian to integrate the Supreme Court of Justice, appointed under the Presidency of Lula da Silva -in a chapter in history truly novelistic-, but who began to judge and condemn the first crimes committed during his administration: Joaquim Barbosa.

In the first round, logically, Lula da Silva came out first, as a candidate for the Presidency, but -the political sectors that oppose him- obtained a majority in the legislative branch of government and, after the second round, they also obtained a majority in the state governments. And in a very young Brazilian democracy, these phenomena can become guarantors of the balance of its democratic institutions.

The judiciary has shown great fragility in the face of pressure from the Executive Powers and promising political leaders on duty, but it has very well-trained jurists who encourage a different future, to achieve its most sensible management and essential independence from the other powers of the State.

Undoubtedly, the Presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, although his administration achieved some stability and progress at the economic level in stormy times, was chaotic and reactionary politically, socially and culturally, particularly in the dramatic days of the pandemic that shook the world.

A political leadership in Brazil, with the characteristics of Bolsonaro, could hardly have been developed without the phenomena of corruption – mensalao and lava jato -, registered during the administrations of Lula da Silva. In turn, the latter would have had important obstacles to resurface, politically, without the existence of such a radical antagonist.

In any case, as in all our countries, the tailwind of our economies, in the first years of the 21st century, during the administrations of Lula da Silva, unlike other governments in the region -belonging to the same sign ideological -, the social ascent of thirty million poor people was achieved, hand in hand with important educational transformations.

Hence, the slight differences in the ballot, find a possible explanation in the fact that the majority of voters who opted for one or the other, did not do so, to a large extent, because of their virtues but because of the greater or lesser defects of the opponents. A significant percentage of voters, both from one side or the other, did not vote for them, but instead voted against the other.

It is evident that the most extreme groups, through social networks, contributed to fomenting the mutual aversion of the voters. But the very low level of the last televised debate between the two candidates also contributed to heating up people’s spirits.

In short, the ballot shows that the majority of Brazilian voters ended up narrowly opting for the candidate they considered the lesser evil for the future of their young democracy.

And beyond the strident noises of the first days, after the ballot and the threats to the continuity of democratic institutions, the new coalition of political forces that will take over the government in 2023, it is highly probable that the State policies will continue, preserved during the different administrations, restoring a climate of good sense, prudence and equanimity. For this to be possible, the close proximity of the next FIFA World Cup in Qatar will also contribute, in which the Brazilian team is one of the favorites, as well as the start of the summer season.

We hope that these will be the main lessons for winners and losers, in which the hopes of a better future for the Brazilian democratic society are based, making it increasingly free and fair.

The challenges are great, it is true, but also, in politics, what can be considered as a lesser evil, can be transformed into a greater good.

“Perhaps what I say is not true, hopefully it is prophetic” and “life is not a dream, but it can become a dream”, wrote the poets Borges and Novalis respectively.