Analysis: Brazil’s weak political center points towards fierce dispute between Lula and Bolsonaro in 2022

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil’s centrist parties are making evident their difficulties finding a viable candidate for the 2022 presidential elections, one who can break the polarization already expected between President Jair Bolsonaro and opposition leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The lack of a leader who can unite a significant percentage of voters who reject both the far-right leader and the leftist former president have made it clear that next year’s elections are increasingly heading towards a highly polarized dispute between Bolsonaro and Lula.

After a meeting held on Wednesday, June 16, in Brasilia to analyze the possible “third way”, the leaders of 7 major centrist parties admitted that there was no consensus on a possible candidate. Still, they did agree that they will not support either the re-election of Bolsonaro or the return of Lula (2003-2010) to the presidency.

The meeting was attended by leaders of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), the party of former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002); the Democrats (DEM), an important force in Congress; the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), the largest electoral force in the country; and medium-sized parties such as Podemos, Citizenship, Solidarity and the Green Party.

The party leaders discussed the “third way” a few hours after the popular TV presenter Luciano Huck, who had been seen by some as a viable candidate for the center, announced his decision to withdraw from the electoral dispute.

For analyst Marco Antonio Carvalho Teixeira, a researcher at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), the difficulties of the center forces and Huck’s decision result from the Supreme Court’s decision to annul the corruption convictions against Lula and to give him conditions to contest the elections.

“The decision muddled the whole political scenario because Lula emerges as a strong candidate, leading the polls of voting intention and able to defeat Bolsonaro. The center parties considered that, without Lula, they could run some candidate who could take advantage of the president’s high unpopularity. Now space is reduced for the center,” said Carvalho Teixeira.

DIVISION IN THE CENTER PARTIES

Furthermore, the center parties themselves are divided and do not give up their intent to choose their own candidates.

The PSDB candidacy is the subject of internal disputes that will have to be settled in a preliminary election called for November, contested by up to four candidates.

The PSDB’s main contender is João Doria, governor of São Paulo – Brazil’s most populous and richest state – who does not have unanimous support within the party.

“If there is no unity in the PSDB itself, it is difficult for it to attract the other parties. There is an internal war between those who want and those who don’t want to support Bolsonaro. This scenario shows that Brazil is heading towards a fierce dispute between Lula and Bolsonaro in 2022,” he added.

NO STRONG CANDIDATES AGAINST BOLSONARO-LULA

For Carolina Almeida de Paula, a researcher at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, no candidate can unite those who reject Bolsonaro and Lula, even though there is room for a third way.

“The latest polls showed that 25% of voters do not want to vote for either Lula or Bolsonaro, but this is a very heterogeneous public, and there is still no one with the capacity to unite them,” said the expert.

“Huck was one of those who could benefit the most from this group. I don’t think the scenario will change until the elections because of the difficulty of finding someone who can unite them. Brazil will hardly have a viable third way in 2022,” he added.

According to Rodrigo Prando, an analyst at Mackenzie Presbyterian University, after Huck’s departure, no candidate in Brazil functions for both the center-right and the center-left, needed to bring business people and the poor together.

According to this analyst, the only one with a profile similar to Huck’s, that is to say, with national visibility, capacity to join all sectors as an “outsider” to politics, is entrepreneur Luiza Trajano, owner of the Magazin Luiza network of stores, but she has already said that she has no presidential aspirations.

Theoretically, the center-left has an alternative to the former minister Ciro Gomes, the leader of the Democratic Labor Party (PDT), and the third most-voted candidate in the first round of the 2018 presidential elections. Still, the forces that supported him then are currently closer to Lula than to him.