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Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro goes on trial
A powerful and immensely popular former right-wing American president went on trial Thursday, and it’s not Donald Trump. Jair Bolsonaro, who led Brazil from 2018 until he narrowly lost to his left-wing nemesis “Lula” da Silva in 2022, faces charges that he unfairly sought to sway voters in that election with baseless claims about problems with the country’s voting system.
If Bolsonaro is found guilty of that charge next week, as many expect he will be, he’ll be banned from holding public office for eight years. Keep an eye on the streets if that happens, as Bolsonaro is the country’s most powerful opposition leader, and his supporters already view the country’s political institutions as hopelessly rigged against him.
But in the longer term, even if he is sidelined from contesting the presidency directly in 2026, he’ll remain a powerful kingmaker in a deeply polarized country.
Brazil's outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro votes during the election runoff in Rio de Janeiro.
What We’re Watching: Bolsonaro’s next move, China’s forever zero-COVID, Iran’s public trials
What’s Bolsonaro gonna do?
Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro will speak publicly on Tuesday for the first time about the presidential election, which he officially lost on Sunday to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by just under two points. Unlike in some other countries — ahem — Brazil’s unified electronic system counts all the votes at once, on the day of the election, and that’s that. But the right-wing Bolsonaro has spent months casting doubt on the credibility of that system itself, repeatedly hinting that he might not accept the result if he loses. Meanwhile, his supporters have cried foul at heavy-handed efforts by courts and electoral authorities to police fake news in the run-up to the vote. Truckers who support him have already blocked roads in 20 of Brazil’s 26 states. Some analysts fear a January 6 insurrection or worse, given Bolsonaro’s cozy ties to the military. Does he really think he can overturn the result? Probably not. Is he crazy enough to try a coup? Doubtful (really). But can he create an awful lot of chaos as a way of bolstering his political capital ahead of his upcoming role as leader of a powerful opposition that now controls congress? Surely. The results are in, but the streets are waiting: your move, Jair.
China's COVID curbs hit Disney, iPhones
Xi Jinping won't let zero-COVID go, no matter how much damage it does to China’s sputtering economy — or to people just having fun. Disney Shanghai shut its gates Monday after the city of 26 million reported a measly 10 infections, leaving visitors stuck inside. The park’s rides are still operating, which is a small bonus for visitors trapped until they test negative three times (this happened last November, with 30,000 people inside the park). Even more troubling, over the weekend employees began sneaking out of Foxconn's largest iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, after being locked down for days in their dormitories with dwindling food supplies amid a COVID outbreak. If a significant chunk of the 200,000-strong workforce vanishes, the factory's output of iPhones could plummet by as much as 30%. It's not just Apple devices – before the pandemic, the plant was China's third-largest exporter, shipping $32 billion worth of electronics per year. As “forever” zero-COVID threatens to further snarl global supply chains ahead of the holiday season, Xi might take over Joe Biden as this year’s Grinch.
Iran to publicly try 1,000 protesters
Tehran said Monday it’ll hold public trials for 1,000 demonstrators arrested during the ongoing protests over the in-custody death of Mahsa Amini, who was reportedly beaten by the morality police for “improperly” wearing her hijab. Authorities say the defendants played an “active role” in the largest protests the country has seen in a decade. But there are no figureheads for the movement, and the women of Iran have been joined in the streets by students, labor unions, and oil workers. The public trials intend to signal that Iran’s leaders will not tolerate dissent against the theocratic republic that has called the shots since 1979. What's more, some of the protesters have been charged with crimes that carry the death penalty; if found guilty, they could be publicly executed. Iran usually hangs death row inmates inside prisons, but perhaps this time the ayatollahs think mass public executions might show protesters — and the world — that they won't give up an inch of power. Will this spark fear, as intended, or revolution?A Lula supporter watches the presidential runoff election results in Brasilia.
What We’re Watching: Lula wins Brazilian nail-biter, Russia kills Ukraine grain deal
Lula wins a tight victory in Brazil
Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will return to the top job in Brazil after winning the runoff election against sitting President Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday. It was, as expected, a very close contest: with 99% of the ballots in, Lula got 50.83% of the vote compared to Bolsonaro's 49.17%.
Lula's tight margin of victory means we’ll keep an eye out for two things. First, he can hardly claim a broad mandate when almost half of Brazil's voters rejected him — something that seemed impossible just two months ago when the leftist Lula was leading the far-right Bolsonaro in the polls by double digits. The result confirms that Brazil is more politically polarized than it's been since the return of democracy in the 1980s and that the right-wing forces that backed Bolsonaro against Lula have staying power.
Second, Bolsonaro did not immediately concede and will likely dispute the result. The question is whether he'll do so by going to court or by urging his supporters and loyalists within the Brazilian military to take to the streets and occupy Congress. A 6 de Janeiro is certainly possible. Buckle up for a rocky transition period until Lula is scheduled to be sworn in on the first day of 2023.
Russia nixes grain deal to punish Ukraine
In response to what it claimed was a Ukrainian attack on its fleet in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, Russia announced Saturday it was “indefinitely” backing out of a UN-brokered deal to ship Ukrainian grain from Black Sea ports. The agreement, which aimed to ease global food inflation, was unlikely to be renewed when it expired on Nov. 19, as Vladimir Putin had hinted it wasn’t really helping poor countries. He may have a point: UN data indicates that more than half of the shipments were received by rich nations, with only one-fifth going to needier ones in Africa and the Middle East. Still, it’s bad news for Ukraine’s economy — and the global one. Russia walking away from the deal "will put upward pressure on prices of global staple grains, like wheat and corn," tweeted Eurasia Group analyst Peter Ceretti. Check out his thread on the implications and what might happen next.
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A man walks past Brazilian presidential campaign materials showing candidates Lula and Bolsonaro in Brasilia.
Brazil smackdown: Lula vs. Bolsonaro, final round
It’s a presidential election between two bitter rivals, each with tens of millions of supporters who see the other as a threat to democracy itself. Sound familiar? It’s not the 2024 US election just yet. No, it’s this Sunday’s presidential smackdown – er, runoff – in Brazil.
The contenders: Brazil’s far-right incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro faces his political nemesis, left-wing former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as “Lula.”
What the polls say. Lula has an average lead of about 3.5 points, with some polls showing as much as 6 points. But pollsters’ failure to predict Bolsonaro’s strong showing in the first round suggests this race could still be more of a toss-up than it seems. Undecideds make up about 4% of the electorate.
This is Brazil’s most polarized election since its return to democracy in the 1980s, says Guga Chacra, a prominent political commentator for Brazil’s GloboNews.
“These are two candidates that people really love and really hate,” he says. “Supporters of Bolsonaro or Lula see them as gods, and they see the other guy as the worst thing that could ever happen.”
So, what’s this election really about?
For some, it’s about the survival of Brazil’s democracy. Bolsonaro, who has railed against the press and the courts throughout his term, has spent months casting doubt on the credibility of Brazil’s electronic voting systems. That’s pushed many of Lula’s former rivals into supporting him for the sake of the country’s institutions. Here’s center-left ex-President Fernando Enrique Cardoso endorsing Lula, a man he beat twice in elections himself.
But Bolsonaro supporters have their own gripes about the fairness of the electoral institutions, says Chris Garman, Brazil director at Eurasia Group. They point to the appointment of an anti-Bolsonaro supreme court justice as an unaccountable fake news ombudsman, as well as a raid on the homes of several pro-Bolsonaro businessmen who simply expressed support for a coup in a WhatsApp chat. Electoral authorities have pressured local TV stations over drawing attention to Lula’s (now vacated) corruption convictions.
“It’s a death trap,” says Garman. “Each side views the other as a threat to the democratic order.”
For others: é a economia, estúpido.For most voters, though, the economy is the top issue. Bolsonaro’s pitch is that he’s cleaned up corruption, reduced crime, and got the country on a path to economic recovery after years of recession and the devastation of the pandemic. Unemployment is now at its lowest level in 6 years, inflation is high but falling, and the economy is growing again, if slowly. He also commands strong support among social ultra-conservatives and Brazil’s rapidly growing Evangelical population.
But with incomes still way below pre-pandemic levels, Lula’s pledges of more social spending, along with his track record of lifting tens of millions of Brazilians out of poverty when he was president in the 2000s, are likely what is giving him the edge in polls.
“The joke is that Lula is actually the Trump candidate,” Garman says, “because his pitch is “Let’s make Brazil Great Again.”
What comes after? If the polls are right, and Lula wins, a Brazilian 6 de Janeiro is a real possibility, though Garman says concerns about a coup by Bolsonaro’s supporters in the military are overblown. “The military doesn’t want that kind of disorder,” he says.
Still, he points out, Lula would have a hard time governing, with half the country convinced that his election was illegitimate, and with Bolsonaro-allied forces now strongly positioned in Congress after a surge in the first round of the election.
The stakes for the world? Just breathe. A Lula presidency, if it happens, would add to the recent “pink tide” in Latin America, and would also ease relations between Brazil and its partners in the US and Europe, which were strained under the populist nationalist Bolsonaro.
But the most important Brazilian election impact for the rest of the world would be in the air, literally. Brazil is home to most of the Amazon rainforest, known as “the lungs of the world.” Although deforestation was ongoing during Lula’s years in power, he has pledged greater measures to protect it than Bolsonaro, whose support for the regions’s small farmers led to some of the largest deforestation numbers in years.
A supporter of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva reacts as people gather after polling stations were closed in the presidential election in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
What We're Watching: Brazilian runoff, Burkina Faso coup 2.0, Ukraine's response to Russian annexations
Lula’s bittersweet first-round win
Left-wing former President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva won the first round of Brazil's presidential election on Sunday but fell short of the outright majority needed to avoid an Oct. 30 runoff that might now be tighter than expected. With almost 97% of the ballots counted, Lula got 47.9% of the vote, 4.2 percentage points more than his nemesis: the far-right incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro. Although Lula is still favored to also win in the second round, the result is good news for Bolsonaro because he outperformed the polls, which had him trailing Lula by a wide margin and led many to believe his rival could win it all in the first round. Some experts think that Bolsonaro is consistently underestimated because many Brazilians are hesitant to admit they vote for him — a theory pollsters deny. Lula's narrower-than-expected victory might give Bolsonaro even more fodder to claim that the surveys are rigged against him. Brazil's president has spent months firing up his base with baseless doubts about the integrity of the election process, and no one would be surprised if he tries to pull a 6 de Janeiro if he loses the runoff.
Coups and counter-coups in Burkina Faso
Coups are always messy affairs, but the West African nation of Burkina Faso is taking it to a whole new level. Late on Friday, Col. Ibrahim Traoré announced the removal of Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Damiba — who ousted democratically elected President Roch Kaboré in January — for failing to defeat an Islamist insurgency. The next day, Traoré claimed Damiba was planning a counter-coup with help from former colonial power France. Pas moyen, says Paris, as protesters attacked French interests in the capital, Ouagadougou, before Damiba agreed to step down on Sunday. Meanwhile, Traoré's junta is reaching out to "new partners" to fight the jihadists — possibly code for Russian mercenaries employed by the notorious Wagner Group, already active in neighboring Mali. The Sahel remains a hotbed for Islamist insurgents despite almost a decade of French military presence, which has hurt France's reputation in many of these countries. A Russian-propagated conspiracy theory that the insecurity is a ruse by Paris to protect its interests is also fueling anti-French sentiment in the Sahel, where coups are making a comeback.
Ukraine won’t give up
Ukraine is claiming a strategic victory in one of its four regions recently annexed by Russia. Lyman, a logistical and railway base in the eastern Donetsk province, has been cleared of Russian forces, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday. Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin blasted Vladimir Putin’s recent nuclear threats, calling them “irresponsible” and “nuclear saber-rattling.” As for the Russian president and his recent land grab of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk, and Luhansk, interesting times are ahead: after holding a ceremony to sign accession treaties, Moscow is expected to process the documents through its parliament, after which Russia will consider the annexations complete. Next up? Russian laws and prosecutors would be imposed on the regions; militias fighting for Russia in Donetsk and Luhansk would be incorporated formally into the Russian military; the Russian ruble would be made the only legal currency; and after an oath of loyalty, residents would officially become Russian citizens. Meanwhile, the leaders of nine NATO countries issued a joint statement on Sunday condemning Russia's annexation of Ukrainian territories and pushing NATO to increase military assistance to Kyiv.
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What We’re Watching: Brazil braces for “moment of truth,” British pound slides, Putin invites chaos, Snowden becomes Russian
Could Lula win it all in Brazil’s first round?
For months, mainstream pollsters have consistently shown Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro trailing his rival, left-wing former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, by a margin of about 10 points. But a new study shows Lula now has nearly 50% support, the threshold for winning the election in the first round, which takes place next Sunday. How accurate are the polls? Support for Bolsonaro is consistently underestimated because many people are unwilling to admit openly that they’ll vote for him. Pollsters say that’s bogus and that they have a good track record of measuring public opinion over the years. Regardless of whether Bolsonaro and his supporters believe the polls, a more important question remains: will they believe the result if he loses? He has spent months fomenting doubt about the electoral system. Either way, as Brazil’s (pro-Bolsonaro) comms minister Fabio Fara put it to the FT: “the moment of truth is coming.”
Markets reject Truss’s tax plan
The shortest UK premiership to date was 119 days, but stay tuned ... The markets just sent newly installed PM Liz Truss a stark warning over her government’s plan to boost borrowing to fund a $45 billion tax cut. Truss says tax cuts should boost spending and economic growth. But thanks to sky-high inflation, prices are already soaring, and more spending makes those costs harder to tame. This runs counter to the Bank of England’s monetary policy, which aims to temper inflation by raising interest rates and slowing demand. With these approaches at odds, the British pound dropped to a 40-year low Monday, trading as far down as $1.035. The Bank of England responded to say it won’t hesitate to further up interest rates — it just raised the main interest rate last week by 50 basis points — if necessary. The OECD, meanwhile, has downgraded its UK growth forecast for 2023 to zero, and there are growing concerns that Truss’s plans could crash the British economy. Some Tory MPs, according to reports, are already mulling a vote of no confidence, but Eurasia Group expert Mujtaba Rahman says that’s unlikely unless the pound implodes.
GZERO spoke with former PM Tony Blair in recent days about the post-Brexit battle to pull Britain back from the brink. Hear his thoughts here.
Putin’s frantic choreography
Russia’s Vladimir Putin has proven again in recent days that he can set in motion chaotic events involving large numbers of people in multiple countries. His sham referenda, which invite Ukrainians in four regions to vote in favor of joining Russia, are coming to an end, and Putin could announce Russian annexation of them later today or during a speech on Friday. His “partial mobilization” of Russian reservists into the army continues. So do the protests and the rush for Russia’s exits it has unleashed. Anti-draft demonstrations are especially intense in the mainly Muslim Russian region of Dagestan, which has suffered a higher death toll than any other Russian province. The leader of neighboring Chechnya, the strongly pro-war Ramzan Kadyrov, has exempted his province from the draft in protest against Kremlin policies he says are too generous toward Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s counteroffensive continues, and Washington promises to continue new financial and military aid, and continues to warn the Kremlin of the consequences of using a nuclear weapon.
What We’re Ignoring: Citizen Snowden
As of Monday, Edward Snowden — the former US intel contractor who spilled the beans on massive US spying programs — is a citizen of Russia. Snowden has been in Russia for nearly a decade, ever since getting stranded at a Moscow airport while on the international lam from US prosecutors. He joins several other Western icons of varying quality who have become Russian citizens in recent years: martial arts action hero Steven Seagal parlayed the honor into eventually becoming Putin’s “special envoy” to the US. The tax-shirking French actor Gerard Depardieu also got himself a crimson passport from the Kremlin, but he evidently lost it for criticizing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine this spring. No word on whether the 39-year-old Snowden, now that he’s a citizen, will be forced to join that fight as part of Putin’s latest mobilization.This article comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Sign up today.