No-show Joe: Biden leaves Trudeau, Canada hanging

Secretary of State Antony Blinken just made a two-day visit north, but still no sign of the president. There’s always 2023.


President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau deliver opening statements via video link in the East Room of the White House February 23, 2021, in Washington, D.C. | Pete Marovich-Pool/Getty Images


By ZI-ANN LUM
10/29/2022


OTTAWA, Ont. — Antony Blinken touched down in Ottawa Thursday, confirming that VIP U.S. government aircrafts are, in fact, capable of landing in Canada.

At least the secretary of State showed up. That’s more than can be said of his boss, President Joe Biden, who has yet to set foot in Canada — the United States’ top trading partner — since taking office. And there’s no sign of a presidential trip anytime soon.

“We’re not expecting a visit to Canada before the end of the year,” a senior Canadian government official with knowledge of the prime minister’s plans, not authorized to speak publicly, told POLITICO Friday.

It blows a timeline Biden and Trudeau set in June, when they met in Los Angeles and “agreed that the President will visit Canada in the coming months.”

Canadian officials have downplayed any read on the delay as a slight, chalking it up to busy schedules, midterm elections — and Covid-19.

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Biden last visited Ottawa as vice president in late 2016 on an official two-day visit that included a state dinner. He hasn’t been back since.

Trudeau traveled to Washington, D.C. on an official visit in November 2021.

Upcoming meetings in Mexico and overseas

The two leaders will likely see each other at the upcoming North American leader’s summit in Mexico and in Indonesia at the G-20 leader’s summit that starts Nov. 15.

Canada is expected to release its new Indo-Pacific strategy around that date, giving the prime minister an international audience to shop for feedback.

One piece of news to emerge during Blinken’s bilat with Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is Ottawa’s interest in joining Biden’s new trade club.

“I am pleased to announce that Canada will seek membership to the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework,” Joly said Thursday.

“We support Canada — a fellow Pacific nation — joining this framework,” responded Blinken.

He then promised to “consult closely” the 14-member group “on the development of a process for considering new members” in the coming months.

“It’s not a decision the United States can make unilaterally,” Blinken said about the trade pact that skipped Ottawa during its initial round of invites. “We would welcome Canada’s participation.”
Bear market bilats

Goldy Hyder, president of the Business Council of Canada, said it was wrong for the U.S. to leave Ottawa out of the IPEF.

“America does not get to decide which countries are Pacific nations, and which ones are the Western Hemisphere nations,” he said.

Historically, he said, when Canada comes to the table “they want to put everything on the table” — and this particular forum isn’t that.

After tense North American Free Trade Agreement renegotiations under the Trump administration strained bilateral relations, the advent of a green industrial revolution in North America is poised to create both opportunity and tension.

Segments of Canadian industry, such as midstream oil and gas companies that operate in the U.S., stand to benefit from funding under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to repurpose pipelines or develop carbon capture, sequestration and storage technology.

Canada would face enduring risks going up against its neighbor, one that happens to be the world’s largest economy. Hyder said the Biden climate bill doubles down on industrial policy to capture markets related to the green transition.



Blinken heading to Canada on first official visit

The massive climate and clean energy bill and CHIPS Act has given the U.S. a supercharged head start in courting investments to develop and retool a low-carbon economy supply chain — which could cause new strains on an old relationship.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is expected to table an IRA counteroffer, or at least elements of one, next week.

It’s a guaranteed ice breaker when Biden and Trudeau meet, regardless of home advantage.

Russia says UK navy blew up Nord Stream pipelines, Ministry of Defence denies involvement

George McMillan

SENIOR DIGITAL PRODUCER

PUBLISHED Saturday 29 October 2022 - 

Russia's defence ministry said on Saturday that British navy personnel blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines last month, a claim that London said was false and designed to distract from Russian military failures in Ukraine.

Russia did not give evidence for its claim that a leading NATO member had sabotaged critical Russian infrastructure amid the worst crisis in relations between the West and Russia since the depths of the Cold War.

The Russian ministry said that "British specialists" from the same unit directed Ukrainian drone attacks on ships of Russian Black Sea fleet in Crimea earlier on Saturday that it said were largely repelled by Russian forces, with minor damage to a Russian minesweeper.

"According to available information, representatives of this unit of the British Navy took part in the planning, provision and implementation of a terrorist attack in the Baltic Sea on September 26 this year - blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines," the ministry said.

Britain denied the claim.

"To detract from their disastrous handling of the illegal invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defence is resorting to peddling false claims of an epic scale," the British defence ministry said.

"This invented story, says more about arguments going on inside the Russian government than it does about the West."

Pipes for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, which are not used, are seen in the harbour of Mukran FABIAN BIMMER

Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russian foreign ministry, said Moscow will seek reaction from the U.N. Security Council saying on social media Moscow wanted to draw attention to "a series of terrorist attacks committed against the Russian Federation in the Black and Baltic Seas, including the involvement of Britain in them"

Russia, deeply isolated by Western nations since its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, has previously blamed the West for the explosions that ruptured the Russian-built Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines on the bed of the Baltic Sea.

But it had not previously given specific details of who it thinks was responsible for the damage to the pipelines, previously the largest routes for Russian gas supplies to Europe.

A sharp drop in pressure on both pipelines was registered on Sept. 26 and seismologists detected explosions, triggering a wave of speculation about sabotage to one of Russia's most important energy corridors.

Elon Musk to lay off workers across Twitter, NYT says

Firings could take place before November 1, when employees of the social media company are set to receive stock grants

Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, California. After more than six months of controversy,

Elon Musk is now at the head of one of the most influential social networks. AFP

Massoud A Derhally

Oct 29, 2022

Beta V.1.0 - Powered by automated translation

Elon Musk plans to lay off staff at Twitter, with some managers at the social media company being asked to draft lists of employees to fire, the New York Times reported, citing sources.

Mr Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter on Friday after months of deliberations during which the billionaire questioned the number of users on the platform but finally gave in as a drawn-out litigation process neared.

Mr Musk, who is the world's richest man and has 110 million Twitter followers, ordered cuts across company, which has about 7,500 staff, the Times said.

The firings are likely to take place before November 1, when employees are set to receive stocks grants as part of their compensation, the newspaper said.

Firing staff before November 1, could assist Mr Musk in avoiding paying the grants to staff, which usually account for a large portion of an employee's pay, it said.

However, under the terms of the acquisition agreement of the company, Twitter employees are supposed to receive cash payments in lieu of their stock grants.

Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal and finance chief Ned Segal left the company and will not be returning, CNBC reported on Thursday, citing sources. Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal policy, trust and safety, was reportedly fired, the Washington Post reported.

The three top executives of Twitter stand to receive separation payouts totalling some $122 million, Reuters reported, citing research company Equilar.

Mr Musk has accused the executives of misleading him and Twitter investors over the number of fake accounts on the platform.

Mr Musk plans to be chief executive at Twitter and intends to lift permanent bans on users because he does not believe in lifelong prohibitions, Bloomberg reported, citing a source. That could pave the way for the return of former US president Donald Trump to the social media platform.

“To be super clear, we have not yet made any changes to Twitter's content moderation policies,” Mr Musk said in a post on Twitter.

Twitter will be forming a content moderation council “with widely diverse viewpoints”, he said.

“No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.”

Mr Musk and Twitter were given until Friday by a US judge to finalise the deal, which has dragged on since April when the Tesla chief executive offered to buy it at $54.20 a share.

He tried to walk away from the deal in May after accusing the social media company of understating the number of bot and fake accounts on the platform, which Twitter denied and led to a series of lawsuits between the two parties. The deal was finally completed ahead of an October 28 deadline set by a US judge, which if missed would have paved the way for a trial.

Updated: October 29, 2022, 

Ukraine questions Twitter takeover amid precarious ties with Musk


Reuters
Publishing date: Oct 29, 2022 • 

KYIV — A senior Ukrainian official expressed skepticism on Saturday about the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk, whose relations with Kyiv have been precarious since the billionaire suggested in early October Ukraine should give up occupied land for peace.

Musk, a self-declared “free speech absolutist,” has expressed desire to shake up Twitter’s content moderation, and tweeted that “the bird is freed” after completing the purchase.

Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted on Saturday: “Did the bird really get its freedom, or has it just moved to a new cage?”

He pointed to Musk’s “unusual moderation” of the site. Musk tweeted on Friday that Twitter would form a content moderation council “with widely diverse viewpoints.”

The Tesla boss drew fury from Kyiv and praise from Moscow this month when he posted a Twitter poll proposing Ukraine permanently cede Crimea to Russia, that new referendums be held under U.N. auspices to determine the fate of Russian-controlled territory, and that Ukraine agree to neutrality.

Kyiv’s reaction to his takeover of Twitter also contrasted sharply with Moscow’s, where the deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, tweeted his congratulations to Musk on Friday.

“Good luck (Elon Musk) in overcoming political bias and ideological dictatorship on Twitter. And quit that Starlink in Ukraine business,” Medvedev wrote, referring to the thousands of satellite-connected internet devices Musk’s company SpaceX operates in Ukraine.

Starlinks are a key communication tool for Ukraine’s armed forces, as regular mobile and internet connection is either missing or not secure in many frontline areas.

Reports appeared in U.S. media in mid-October that SpaceX could start demanding payment from the U.S. government for Starlink services in Ukraine, which Musk says will cost the company $100 million by the end of 2022.

Musk responded to the reports by saying that SpaceX had withdrawn the request. 

(Reporting by Max Hunder; Editing by Alison Williams)

Franco-Australian conservationist abducted in Chad, government says

A Franco-Australian person has been kidnapped in eastern Chad, near the Sudanese border, "by as yet unidentified individuals", the government in N'Djamena said in a statement on Saturday.

Franco-Australian conservationist abducted in Chad, government says© Zohra Bensemra, Reuters

"The government has mobilised all security and human means to catch the kidnappers," the authorities said.

"This abduction occurred yesterday, in the afternoon of October 28, 2022," a statement added, without giving details of the abduction.

"We are aware of the kidnapping of one of our citizens in Chad and are in contact with their family, and also with the authorities in Chad, in order to secure their rapid release," the French foreign ministry told AFP.

The abucted man had been working in a park run by the Sahara Conservation Fund, a wildlife NGO. The fund was set up in 2004 to help save the endangered scimitar-horned oryx.  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-oryx-was-once-cryptid-in-pictures.html

Chad has been run by a military junta led by Mahamat Idriss Deby since his father was killed in an operation against rebels in April 2021.

A semi-desert state located in the heart of central western Africa, Chad has been chronically unstable since it gained independence from France in 1960.

The country's eastern region, close to Darfur in western Sudan, has been plagued by organised crime and trafficking of all types.

There is often deadly violence in the region, particularly between local communities, on both sides of the border.

(AFP)

Sudan Islamists protest UN post-coup mediation

Sat, October 29, 2022 


Some 3,000 protesters in Khartoum on Saturday rejected UN mediation efforts between civilian and military leaders as "foreign interference" and called for Islamist rule in Sudan, an AFP correspondent said.

A military coup led by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan last year derailed a fragile transition to civilian rule after the 2019 ouster of long-time autocrat Omar al-Bashir.

For 12 months, near weekly anti-coup protests have been met with force, and efforts by the United Nations and other international actors to bring Sudan's military government and civilian leaders to the table have stalled.

The crowd that gathered Saturday in front of the headquarters of the UN mission in Sudan chanted pro-Bashir slogans and burned photos of UN envoy Volker Perthes.

"We are demonstrating for our dignity and our sovereignty. Volker has defiled our country," protester Hafez Joubouri told AFP.


Another told AFP he wanted "the armed forces to side with the people and kick Volker out today".

An AFP correspondent said some protesters chanted "Volker, you mole, we beheaded Gordon," referring to British general Charles Gordon who was killed in an 1885 revolt in Sudan.

With police standing nearby, some demonstrators waved banners reading "No to foreign interference" and "No to the UN", an AFP correspondent said.

The crowd later dispersed without incident.

The country has been grappling with deepening political unrest and a spiralling economic crisis since Burhan seized power on October 25, 2021 and arrested the civilian leaders with whom he had agreed to share power.

Civilian leaders have refused to negotiate with the military before it commits to a timetable for full withdrawal from power.

Pro-democracy activists worry that Burhan's regime has reappointed Bashir loyalists to official positions, including in the judiciary that is now trying the former Islamist dictator.

On Thursday, security forces had fired tear gas at thousands of demonstrators demanding an end to military rule.

The crackdown on anti-coup protests has killed at least 119 people, according to pro-democracy medics.

ab/sbh/sar/bha/ami/lg

IT HAS NO RECORD

Canada Soccer defends record on Qatar human rights issues
Sat, October 29, 2022 at 1:55 PM·2 min read


Canada Soccer has defended their position on human rights in Qatar after campaigners accused them of not doing enough over issues ahead of next month's World Cup.

Minky Worden, director of Global Initiatives for Human Rights Watch said this week that Canada Soccer had been "completely missing in action” on labour rights, women's rights LGBTQ and human rights issues in the Gulf nation.

Worden said that Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have called for FIFA and the Qatari government to set aside no less than US$440 million dollars as a fund to compensate migrant workers.

In a statement, Canada Soccer did not address the issue of the compensation fund but said that it had been heavily involved in discussions over rights issues.

"From the moment our Men’s National Team qualified for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, Canada Soccer have been actively engaged on these issues," read the statement.

"We met with the Canadian Embassy in Doha, Qatar in April, July and in September of this year, focusing on cultural awareness, local education, and event preparation. At every meeting, discussions also included the latest updates on human rights and matters of inclusivity in Qatar.

"In recent months, we have also met and were provided presentations by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and Amnesty International where good discussions and updates were shared from both organisations," the statement added.

FIFA awarded the World Cup to an Arab country for the first time after a contentious bidding process in 2010. Qatar has since faced constant scrutiny over its treatment of foreign workers as well as LGBTQ and women's rights.

The Canadian federation said it had made the "conscious decision" to partner with vendors in Qatar "whose shared values and principles are aligned with our shared Canadian values." THERE ARE NONE OH SORRY YOU MEAN CAPITALIST VALUES

Qatar has said they have made a number of reforms in recent years, particularly in the area of rights for migrant workers and Canada Soccer said they could prove to be effective.

"Through our ongoing dialogue in recent months, it is our understanding that Qatar’s legal reforms, if fully implemented, have the potential to have a real impact and further improve protections for workers’ rights across the country.

"We encourage all partners to continue their efforts to implement recent labour reforms and continue to address and resolve past labour abuses."

Canada will be playing in their first World Cup finals since 1986 and the federation said they would represent their country's values.

"Canada enjoys a global reputation as a defender of human and LGBTQ2S rights, anchored on a record that is seen as one of the leaders globally.

"Canada Soccer will continue to uphold that reputation, build on what we have already started, and like so many other sporting bodies internationally, continue to ensure our players and fans are safe, included, celebrated and treated equitably."

Canada Soccer urged to join push for compensation of World Cup migrant workers in Qatar

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Hundreds of thousands of migrants worked on projects in 

years leading up to pending tournament

MANY WERE EXPELLED FROM THE KINGDOM THIS WEEK

CBC News · Posted: Oct 27, 2022 

Workers are seen walking to the construction site of the Al-Wakra stadium in Doha, Qatar, in May 2015. Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers are believed to have been involved in the many projects undertaken in advance of the upcoming FIFA World Cup. (Maya Alleruzzo/The Associated Press)

Canada Soccer is being urged to support calls to compensate the migrant workers whose labour made the upcoming World Cup in Qatar a reality — and cost some of them their lives.

Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers have been involved in preparing for the upcoming World Cup, according to Amnesty International.

The human-rights organization wants $440 million US — a total matching the World Cup prize money — provided to compensate workers who suffered human-rights abuses while working on projects in the years leading up to the tournament.

• 'Completely unacceptable': Qatar World Cup organizers admit workers were exploited

• OPINION
  Journalists cannot allow World Cup to 'sportswash' Qatar's human-rights abuses

But so far, Canada's governing body for the sport has stayed silent on the issue. It's spurred soccer fans and human-rights advocates alike to blow the whistle on the organization's lack of engagement.

WATCH | Human rights concerns persist in Qatar as World Cup approaches: 

                                       As Qatar prepares to host the men's World Cup of soccer in one month, concerns persist about human rights in the conservative Muslim country. Global Affairs is warning Canadians travelling to Qatar that LGBTQ2 travellers could face discrimination or even detention.

'Highly disappointing'

"It's not only surprising but highly disappointing," said Ketty Nivyabandi, the secretary general of Amnesty International Canada.

Nivyabandi said at least seven national soccer federations — including the U.S., England, France and the Netherlands — have spoken up on this issue. But not Canada's own team, or its governing organization.

Ketty Nivyabandi, the secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, believes many Canadian soccer fans want their national team 'to speak up against these violations and to recognize that this is happening at the expense of migrant workers in in Qatar.' (Christian Patry/CBC)

She believes many soccer fans want their national team "to speak up against these violations and to recognize that this is happening at the expense of migrant workers in in Qatar."

Canada Soccer did not respond to a request from CBC News for comment on Thursday.

One national men's team player, Lucas Cavallini, told CBC News that he hasn't had conversations with other players about controversies in Qatar.

• ANALYSIS
  Rust a risk for many of Canada's men's soccer team ahead of World Cup

• Denmark unveils World Cup jerseys that protest host Qatar

"We're just all basically distracted with the tournament and how things go for us and just worrying about playing football … We're there to compete in a tournament, so it's basically all we need to focus on."

The issue has taken on a higher profile with members of Denmark's national team, whose players will have an alternate jersey to wear to pay tribute to the migrant workers who lost their lives.

Fan club 'alarmed'

A prominent group of national team supporters in Canada, known as the Voyageurs, is calling on both the organization and the national team to step up.

The Voyageurs told CBC News its members have had to weigh their concerns about the treatment of migrants in Qatar against the desire to support their national squad.

The Lusail Stadium in Qatar is seen under construction in December 2019. The 2022 FIFA World Cup final is slated to be held at the facility. (Hassan Ammar/The Associated Press)

"Our goal is to cheer on our players anywhere they play. In qualifying for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, this means supporting our men's team in Qatar," the fan club said in a statement.

"The human rights issues and the treatment of migrant workers have been well documented," the statement said, noting this has meant club members have had to make personal decisions on whether to travel to Qatar.

• Qatar lauds Putin, Russian support in organizing World Cup

The Voyageurs also expressed concerns about other human-rights issues in Qatar, beyond those directly connected to the soccer tournament preparations.

"We are alarmed with the Qatari government's treatment of the LGBTQ+ population in the country and the many deaths that have occurred in building the World Cup stadia and infrastructure," the club said, saying it joins with other public calls for compensation to be offered to the families of migrants workers who have died.

WATCH | Australian team video critical of Qatar's human rights record: 

Members of Australia’s men's World Cup team criticized host country Qatar for its poor human rights record in a black-and-white video, the first 2022 World Cup team to do so. Now, supporters and human rights groups are calling on Canada Soccer to speak out.

Clashes as thousands march in France against agro industry water 'megabasins'

Thousands of demonstrators defied an official ban to march on Saturday against the deployment of new water storage infrastructure for agricultural irrigation in western France, according to organisers.


Clashes as thousands march in France against agro industry water 'megabasins'© Pascal Lachenaud, AFP

Clashes between paramilitary gendarmes and demonstrators erupted with Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin reporting that 61 officers had been hurt, 22 seriously, but giving no toll for casualties among protesters.

"Bassines Non Merci" a pressure group that brings together environmental associations, trade unions and anti-capitalist groups, organised the demonstration against what it claims is a "water grab" by the "agro-industry" in western France.

The deployment of giant water "basins" is underway in the village of Sainte-Soline, in the Deux-Sèvres department, to irrigate crops, which opponents claim distorts access to water amid drought conditions.

Around 1,500 police were deployed according to the prefect of the Deux-Sèvres department Emmanuelle Dubée who said she expected some 5,000 demonstrators to descend on the village of around 350 inhabitants.

Dubée said on Friday that she had wanted to limit possible "acts of violence", referring to the clashes between demonstrators and security forces that marred a previous rally in March.

The Sainte-Soline water reserve is the second of 16 such installations, part of a project developed by a group of 400 farmers organised in a water cooperative to significantly reduce mains water usage in summer.

The open-air craters, covered with a plastic tarpaulin, are filled by pumping water from surface groundwater in winter and can store up to 650,000 square metres of water.

This water is used for irrigation in summer, when rainfall is scarcer.

Opponents claim the "megabasins" are wrongly reserved for large export-oriented grain farms and deprive the community of access to the essential resource.

Lula lead narrows on eve of tense Brazil runoff: poll

Sat, October 29, 2022


Leftist challenger Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's lead over far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro narrowed slightly on the eve of Brazil's polarizing presidential runoff, according to a poll published late Saturday.

Lula has 52 percent voter support to 48 percent for Bolsonaro, according to the poll from the Datafolha institute -- down from a six-point gap (53 percent to 47 percent) on Thursday.

The figures exclude voters who plan to cast blank or spoiled ballots -- four percent of respondents, Datafolha estimates. Undecided voters represented just two percent.

The margin of error for the poll, which was based on interviews with 8,308 people on Friday and Saturday, was plus or minus two percentage points.


According to Datafolha, only half of those polled watched an insult-filled final debate between the rivals on Friday night, 19 percent of them until the end.

The poll indicated that 37 percent thought Lula had come out on top during the debate, while 29 percent thought Bolsonaro had performed best.

Lula, the charismatic but tarnished ex-president who led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, won the first round of the election on October 2 with 48 percent of the vote, to 43 percent for former army captain Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro and his allies have attacked polling firms, accusing them of bias.

He outperformed pollsters' expectations in the first round, triumphantly boasting afterward: "We beat the lie."

Lula, 77, leads among women (51 percent), the poor and working-class (57 percent), and Catholics (56 percent), according to Datafolha.

Bolsonaro, 67, leads among evangelical Christians (65 percent) and wealthier voters (52 percent).

fb/mdl


Bolsonaro, Lula trade blows in bruising final Brazil election debate

Former Brazil's President and presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attends a Presidential Debate ahead of the national election, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil October 28, 2022. ― Reuters pic

Saturday, 29 Oct 2022

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 29 ― Brazil's right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro and his leftist election rival, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, traded barbs late yesterday in their final televised debate ahead of tomorrow's tense runoff vote.

Polls suggest Lula is the slight favourite to come back for a third term, capping a remarkable political renaissance after his jailing on graft convictions that were overturned. But Bolsonaro outperformed opinion polls in the first-round vote this month, and many analysts say the election could go either way.

During yesterday's free-wheeling debate, the deeply polarising figures attacked each other's character and record, accused each other of lying and refused repeatedly to answer each other's questions.

Bolsonaro opened the debate by denying reports that he might unpeg the minimum wage from inflation, announcing instead he would raise it to 1,400 reais (RM1,227) a month if re-elected, a move that is not in his government's 2023 budget.

Still, most analysts and focus groups with undecided voters suggested the president had done little to shake up a race that polls show broadly stable since Lula led the first round of voting on October 2 by 5 percentage points.

That result was better for Bolsonaro than most polls had shown, giving him a boost of momentum to start the month, but the past two weeks of the campaign have presented headwinds.

On Sunday, one of Bolsonaro's allies opened fire on Federal Police officers coming to arrest him. A week earlier Bolsonaro had to defend himself from attack ads after he told an anecdote about meeting Venezuelan migrant girls in suggestive terms.

In their first head-to-head debate this month, Lula blasted Bolsonaro's handling of a pandemic in which nearly 700,000 Brazilians have died, while Bolsonaro focused on the graft scandals that tarnished the reputation of Lula's Workers Party.

Last night, both candidates returned repeatedly to Lula's two terms as president from 2003 to 2010, when high commodity prices helped to boost the economy and combat poverty. Lula vowed to revive those boom times, while Bolsonaro suggested current social programs are more effective. ― Reuters

Sunday’s Election Is a Test of Brazilian Democracy

AN INTERVIEW WITH

VINCENT BEVINS

Brazil’s extreme-right president Jair Bolsonaro might go down to defeat in the second round of presidential voting. But, win or lose, the political coalition he’s assembled may endure after October 30.

Supporters of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wave flags during a campaign rally

 in a street in Brasília, on October 29, 2022. 

(Evaristo Sa / AFP via Getty Images)

10.29.2022
Jacobin

INTERVIEW BY LUKE SAVAGE

This Sunday, more than one hundred million Brazilians will vote in the second and final round of the country’s presidential election, which pits former president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva against extreme-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. In the first round, held earlier this month, Bolsonaro finished more than five points behind Lula and seems poised to become the first Brazilian president ever to lose reelection. Nonetheless, polls have seemed to tighten in recent weeks and many observers expect a close contest on Sunday — raising the ominous prospect that Bolsonaro may refuse to concede defeat and attempt to cling to power.

What are the issues at play in Brazil’s historic election? How have the politics of COVID-19 factored in? And what does the future hold for the far-right project of Bolsonarismo, even if the man at its center loses the runoff? To explore these questions, Jacobin’s Luke Savage sat down with Vincent Bevins — who lived in Brazil from 2010 to 2016 and worked as a correspondent, wrote The Jakarta Method (which came out in 2020), and moved back to São Paulo last year to work on his second book.
LUKE SAVAGE

To start with the basics: because neither major candidate received over 50 percent of the vote earlier this month, Brazil is going to be voting in the second round of its presidential election on October 30. Before we get to the runoff, can you walk us through what transpired in the first round a bit? The general impression seems to be that Lula somewhat underperformed what some polls suggested was possible. Can you explain the results of the first round and give us your impression of them?
VINCENT BEVINS

After Lula got out of jail and recovered his political rights — his right to run for president, which he lost after trying unsuccessfully in 2018 to run for president against Bolsonaro the first time — many polls indicated he was going to absolutely trounce Bolsonaro, among other things because Bolsonaro had done such a poor job governing the country, especially during the pandemic. Now, only a couple of those polls suggested that Lula was going to actually clear the 50 percent hurdle necessary to wrap it up in the first round. Some people were hoping for that, though I didn’t myself think it was too likely. Now, he ultimately got 48.5 percent of the vote, which is only a little bit less than the 50 percent he would’ve needed. And if he had gotten that extra 1.5 percent, it would be a really resounding defeat for Bolsonaro. No Brazilian president has ever lost reelection ever since reelection has been allowed in Brazilian democracy.

Still, the result was a little bit less than what the more optimistic parts of the Left were hoping for.

What was more of a surprise was how Bolsonarismo as a political movement outside of Bolsonaro himself did across the country. It did quite well in Congress, especially in the Senate, snatching some key governorships and appearing to be positioned to snatch more. So the polls really underestimated Bolsonarismo’s support more than they overestimated Lula’s.

LUKE SAVAGE

Can you put Bolsonarismo in context for us? I think there’s a similar problem or complexity at work when we talk about something like Trumpism in that you’re dealing with a political tendency that is very much based around a charismatic figure at its center, and is intimately linked in some ways to their personal affectations and style, but also has a separate life of its own.
VINCENT BEVINS

I think that Bolsonarismo is more real than Trumpism. It’s a weird and contradictory coalition of forces in Brazilian society that came together as a result of his candidacy in 2018, and could well (though may not necessarily) continue to exist after Bolsonaro himself leaves the presidency and after his family stops being a force in Brazilian politics. What exactly is that strange and contradictory coalition of forces? Essentially, it’s an extreme right movement. Everybody that is a Bolsonarista, I would say, is opposed to democracy or is at least willing to cancel democracy for some kind of a higher purpose.

Bolsonarismo draws upon the support of the security services and people who support them. Evangelical Christians have also become a very important part of what Bolsonarismo is. At the beginning, there was a kind of a neoliberal, hardcore free-market component to Bolsonarismo as well. Paulo Guedes, who is literally a Chicago boy and used to work in Pinochet’s Chile, became finance minister. That support from the upper class, business, and national bourgeoisie is not quite as strong today as it was in 2018. But they were an important part of bringing this coalition together.It’s clear Bolsonarismo will be in power in some way, at least with a bloc in Congress and in control of state governments, even if Jair Bolsonaro loses.

There are also the agricultural heartlands of the country, which are now seeming to be quite Bolsonarista. The fact that agriculture has done well under Bolsonaro’s government often has nothing to do with him. But the parts of the agricultural world that want to break laws and burn down even more of the Amazon rainforest than is allowed by current legislation, that want to invade indigenous territories, those people tend to be Bolsonarista just because Bolsonaro says these actions are good. So, it’s clear Bolsonarismo will be in power in some way, at least with a bloc in Congress and in control of state governments, even if Jair Bolsonaro loses and walks out of the presidential palace on January 1.
LUKE SAVAGE

Outside observers, and by that I mainly mean those in the United States, are I think somewhat bound to see this election through a very particular set of reference points. And perhaps that makes some sense in broad strokes: Bolsonaro having some obvious similarities with Trump, among other things. But Brazil is a huge and complicated country with politics of its own — not just a Portuguese-speaking version of the United States. What would you say are the main issues at play in the election beyond those that most English-speaking media are liable to focus on?
VINCENT BEVINS

The really simple answer to that question is that Brazil is in a much worse place than it was four years ago — and those Brazilians who can remember Lula’s government remember that things were better. Starvation and extreme poverty have jumped up under Bolsonaro, especially since the pandemic. And that is really what’s driven what I think is the major story of the campaign, which is that for the first time ever a sitting Brazilian president seems poised to lose reelection.

The comparison with the United States is an interesting one and it’s also kind of aggravating because, on the one hand, there are a lot of Trumpian things about Bolsonaro. On the other hand, Bolsonaro wants people in North America to think that. It’s an image that he (and some members of his family who are a little bit savvier when it comes to international relations and social media spin) has deliberately cultivated: that ‘I’m the Trump of the tropics and an ally of the Republican Party and Fox News in South America’; that ‘when they come after me down here, it’s the same thing as when woke professors and the Democratic Party come after you in North America.’ This has been done very explicitly, and I think there are reasons to do it. I mean, if a Republican were to reenter the White House, because of the sort of negative polarization in the most powerful country in the hemisphere, he would probably try to reach out to Bolsonarismo or perhaps take a really aggressive stance toward a possible Workers’ Party government in Brazil.I have a hard time imagining that Trumpism could have the same longevity as Bolsonarismo.

Bolsonaro’s personal history is very different from Trump’s, because Trump is a guy from television who, in my opinion, just wanted to stay on television and found in politics a way to do that. Bolsonaro, by comparison, is a creature of Brazil’s dictatorship — which of course came about as a result of the US-backed coup in 1964. He is a real believer in antidemocratic principles and a hardcore anti-communist. He’s not really a neoliberal, and he doesn’t care about economics. He’s not really religious, though he has made an alliance with Brazil’s growing evangelical Christian movement — which I suppose does resonate quite a bit with politics in the United States. But he’s somebody who, for his entire life, has believed that the Left needs to be crushed and that the democracy that has been constituted in Brazil since 1988 and the end of the dictatorship is a sham. This is a movement which has real ideological coherence in a way I don’t think Trumpism ever has. I have a hard time imagining that Trumpism could have the same longevity as Bolsonarismo.
LUKE SAVAGE

In a televised debate earlier this month, Lula attacked Bolsonaro for his handling of COVID-19, and I’m very curious as to how much salience the pandemic has had throughout the campaign. Late last year, you wrote for New York Magazine that despite Bolsonaro’s anti-vaccine posturing, Brazil had had relatively few anti-vaxxers. Has that held during the campaign?

VINCENT BEVINS

Yes, it has. I think that Bolsonaro (and especially his sons) instinctively try to import culture war stuff from the United States so they can see what sticks. From the very beginning, Bolsonaro really doubled down on the idea that COVID-19 wasn’t a big deal and people didn’t have to worry about it: everyone should work, the scientists saying that stay at home measures could work — that was a bunch of woke nonsense (though he wouldn’t have actually used that term). But this wasn’t effective, especially among urban elites. It did resonate within the hardcore base, though in a funny way: they would say ‘Yeah, we gotta look into those vaccines, there’s something wrong there . . .’ but then they would all get vaccinated anyway. So it didn’t really work here in the way that it did in the United States, and this was something that Bolsonaro lost important elite support over. Some of that migrated from the cities and countryside, and from the (let’s call it) respectable, civilized, pro-business right to the hyper-radicalized Bolsonarista base. And this is a strategy he has: he will often import things from the United States. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t.

Something else he’s tried to import from the United States is this idea that the voting system cannot be trusted. For almost the whole of last year, he was trying to set up a narrative that, if he were to lose, it would be fake because the voting system here can’t be trusted. Again, this makes no sense compared to the US context. In the United States, you have a diverse array of voting mechanisms in different states. In Brazil, no serious international observers think there’s anything strange about the way the votes are counted — it’s uniform across the country. The story Bolsonaro has been telling also calls into question his own victory and the victories of all his allies, so we’re now seeing — at the last minute — a pivot to a different narrative about how the election might be stolen from him, which has to do with censorship and court intervention.

So yes, he imports these things even when they don’t work and, while that may cost him domestically, I think in the long term the Bolsonaro family has the idea of creating an alliance with the Republican Party. And they maybe do need something like that in order to survive, because if Bolsonaro had been soundly defeated in the first round, the family could have all faced jail time. I mean, they’ve certainly committed enough crimes to deserve it. The question was whether or not the political system would prosecute these kinds of cases given the explosiveness of such a scenario. And, now that they have a decent base in government, it might be less likely.

Anyway, its political effectiveness aside, COVID-19 questioning has been a big part of his campaign rhetorically. And that’s the direct result of the intentional Americanization of Brazilian politics, and Americanization of Brazil.
LUKE SAVAGE

On the French far right, and I suppose across much of the far right globally, there’s been a lot of Americanization for obvious reasons. Has the specific framework of woke versus anti-woke actually penetrated the Brazilian context? You’ll hear French politicians like Marine Le Pen, for example, talking about “le wokeism,” and in that context, it gets discussed as a kind of pernicious import from the United States that needs to be repelled. What is the equivalent to that in Brazil? Has the rather nebulous binary of woke and anti-woke made its way into the lexicon of Bolsonarismo?
VINCENT BEVINS

Not linguistically. But, as a vibe? Absolutely. The thing about Bolsonaro is that he has quite a coherent narrative going back to the 1990s, which is that the Left has been culturally and politically hegemonic, it tells you what you’re supposed to think, and there’s been (as he would call it) communist indoctrination. So that’s been the way that he’s looked at all of these things since the 1990s. And there have been a number of powerful, far-right ideological figures in Brazil — especially Olavo de Carvalho, this strange philosopher that lived in the United States and posted on Facebook all day long — who have used this framework of cultural Marxism or communist indoctrinationBolsonaro has quite a coherent narrative going back to the 1990s, which is that the Left has been hegemonic, it tells you what you’re supposed to think, and there’s been communist indoctrination.

So this would all fall within that: rights for LGBTQ people, recognition of diversity, using the state in any way to try and help poorer Brazilians — that’s all just communist indoctrination. Bolsonaro brought Tucker Carlson here and they had a conversation where they tried to find common discursive commonalities between their two discourses, and it wasn’t very hard to find them. Some of it was ridiculous because PT (Lula’s Workers’ Party) is very much working class and Carlson seemed to think it was the Brazilian equivalent of Brooklyn liberals that were voting Lula into power. But, in general, they did find a lot of common ground in terms of discourse.

And that’s not a coincidence, because Brazil is deeply influenced by US culture — not only in terms of the internet but also television and political discourse. The only other politics that Brazilian media pay attention to are those of the United States. A lot of woke-era vocabulary has certainly entered Brazilian Portuguese. You can, for example, get “cancelado” (canceled), which is something that the right rails against here. But “woke” itself hasn’t quite made it, even if the discourse around it absolutely overlaps.
LUKE SAVAGE

There are two recent incidents I want to ask you about. Several days ago, police attempted to arrest a retired politician and an ally of Bolsonaro’s (Roberto Jefferson) and he responded by firing on them and throwing grenades? Bolsonaro has also apologized after footage emerged of him telling a story about an encounter with some teenage girls. What exactly is going on here?

VINCENT BEVINS

Both of these episodes have been bad for Bolsonaro but I think one has been worse. They’ve also become live campaign elements and have really dominated a lot of the conversations in recent weeks. One is very real, and the other is, perhaps, less so beyond the fact that Bolsonaro can’t speak about young women without sexualizing and insulting them. In that case, Bolsonaro told this story about how he was walking around the outskirts of Brasília (the capital) and (in his telling) he saw some young women who were ‘all dressed up’ and said ‘Why are you dressed up?’ The best way to translate the phrase he used next is that he said ‘there was some chemistry.’ As he told it, he then asked them if he could go back to their place and asked ‘What are you doing?.’ And then — remember, this is the version of the story that he wants the Bolsonarista listener to hear — they said ‘We’re prostitutes because we’re Venezuelan and the Left destroyed our country, and this is all that’s left for us.’

None of this makes sense in the way that he told it, because, if he were to have stumbled upon that horrible situation, he shouldn’t have gone on a podcast, he should have called in the police to stop these young women from being sex trafficked. This strange attempt to pin sex work in Brazil on the Left in Venezuela doesn’t make a lot of sense either, because he’s the president and there are, as I think I mentioned earlier, millions of young people who can’t get enough food here. So, if you want to find Brazilians that are in very difficult situations (because of him) it’s not hard to do. Anyway, journalists went back and looked into this and the Venezuelan women said ‘No, he did come here, but we’re not sex workers.’ He just made that up or thought it, and I think this incident really is just another example of him not being able to talk about women without sexualizing or insulting them — and hinting at the idea he was having sexual thoughts toward underage immigrants.

Now, the story with Roberto Jefferson — who is a longtime friend and ally of the Bolsonaro family — definitely happened because it was filmed and he wanted everyone to know about it. This guy is kind of nuts and even many on the Right will admit to that. He’s been under house arrest, apparently for being part of a digital criminal organization which is using social media to push for antidemocratic measures. Now, this part is kind of strange and I don’t exactly understand the sentence, but they basically said he couldn’t be under house arrest anymore because he’d been violating the terms of his house arrest by using social media. And they sent someone to go pick him up and, instead of cooperating, he tried to mount some kind of heroic martyr’s stand and go down in a blaze of glory because they wouldn’t let him post on the internet. He ended up coming out, shooting some federal police, and throwing a grenade at them. And this has become a huge scandal that even Bolsonaro has been forced to distance himself from. Usually, Bolsonaro will back anything happening on the Right that’s provocative. In this case, he actually went and said, ‘We’re not that close, and this is not the kind of thing I support.’

But another problem for Bolsonaro is that the incident reminded everyone that his son Eduardo, when he was eighteen, was on the books for receiving a salary for work he performed as a congressional assistant in Brasília while he was a full-time student in Rio de Janeiro — and the man who hired him for this job, which must have been fake (and if it was not fake, it would’ve been illegal to hire him for it) was Roberto Jefferson. This is the kind of low-level corruption that everyone believes the Bolsonaro family has been involved in forever. They never got involved in the high-level corruption that became the subject of the Lava Jato investigations because they weren’t important enough in Congress. So, this is not only a problem because somebody that has been photographed many times with Bolsonaro tried to kill a bunch of police — which is a big deal given the pro-security-forces orientation of Bolsonarismo — but also because it reminded people of the corruption Bolsonaro’s son was apparently involved with many years ago.

It’s bad for Bolsonaro because he was already behind in the polls, though they had been getting closer. So if this stops them from tightening further, it may be enough to lose him the election. It’s only Tuesday, and of course something even more insane could happen before Sunday, but this was too mediatized an event to stop people from talking about it and, well, everybody is talking about it.
LUKE SAVAGE

Polling ahead of the first round of voting suggested, on average, a Lula lead of about eleven points – though he finished by only five. Ahead of the runoff at the end of this month, polls have still given Lula an edge but have also seemed to tighten further. Perhaps predictably, Bolsonaro has started attacking pollsters (Brazil’s House of Representatives is even set to pass legislation criminalizing inaccurate polls — though its future in the Senate looks more uncertain). I’d like to ask you about that, but I’m also curious how you account for the electoral resilience of Bolsonarismo? Brazil’s GDP has fallen since he was elected in 2018. There’s also been an increase in hunger, to say nothing of nearly seven hundred thousand COVID-19 deaths. All of these likely contributed to what was at one time a Lula lead of almost thirty points. Things look quite different now. How would you account for what’s become an unexpectedly close election?
VINCENT BEVINS

It’s a good question. One part of it that’s troubling and hopefully ephemeral is that Bolsonaro found his real base after 2018. There was just a strange grouping of people that got together behind his candidacy largely out of rejection for what had come before. But, as I said, agricultural parts of the country can believe somewhat rationally that Bolsonaro is better for their interests. Evangelical Christians can probably believe, albeit with less evidence, that he’s somebody who can push for the sort of moral policies that Lula would not (and that’s an area where fake news comes into play, but you can create a stable base with that kind of representation of Lula).In addition to the sort of organic base of Bolsonarismo growing throughout four years in power, you have the shameless use of state finances to try to influence votes at the last minute.

The other dynamic, which I think is really important for explaining the shifts in polling that have transpired over the last few months, is the massive and shameless use of the state to pour money into every part of the country where it might influence voters. Bolsonaro entered office with a neoliberal finance minister who promised to be transparent and anti-corruption. And what’s happening now is a use of the state to flood money into the pockets of political allies, anybody that can help influence voting, and anybody that might be convinced to change their vote to an extent that’s really never been seen before.

It’s quite shocking, and I think even some of the most seasoned analysts of Latin American politics have been surprised that he’s moved forward a lot of welfare payments to the months just before the election. Lula still leads among the poorest Brazilians, but not as much as he did a few months ago. And the best explanation for this is that Bolsonaro gave them money. Everyone knows the finance minister is going to cut all of that off immediately in January, and he already has plans to do so. This is purely to get people to vote one way rather than the other, and it’s very bad for state finances.

Then there’s been this (as it’s been called) multibillion dollar secret budget which allows local lawmakers allied to Bolsonaro to basically spend money locally however they want. There’s already considerable evidence of corruption coming out of this secret budget — towns are making up the numbers, e.g. a town with eleven thousand people that performed seventeen thousand dental procedures in the last two weeks, and other stuff in this vein.

So, in addition to the sort of organic base of Bolsonarismo growing throughout four years in power, you have the shameless use of state finances to try to influence votes at the last minute.
LUKE SAVAGE

As a final question, would it be fair to say that the proportion of economic versus cultural politics at play in Brazilian politics at the moment favors the latter? From abroad, the impression of Bolsonaro is that he’s very much a culture warrior, and that seems to be one of the ways he’s been able to mitigate the drag of the country’s poor economic performance over the past four years on his own electoral prospects. How would you characterize the final stage of the election in terms of whether economic or cultural issues are prevailing?
VINCENT BEVINS

I would say it’s more the cultural. If it were economic, you would not see such a big discrepancy between male and female voters. White men are the only demographic category in Brazil that go for Bolsonaro over Lula (black women, by contrast, vote for Lula something like four to one). Bolsonarismo is powered by the petty bourgeois or middle class (but not that educated) white man that has weaponized his identity — which resonates with Trump’s support — that is, the kind of white man that believes he is at risk of having his privilege taken away and thinks he can attack those below him with the help of someone above him. In other words, the classic base for the extreme right: the angry, frustrated, emasculated, petty bourgeois man, in coalition with agribusiness and small scale producers. That’s more or less the organic and economic base.

But the real core of the Bolsonarismoist movement is not so strictly rational. The committed Bolsonaristas really believe in it. His spending offensive has gotten some of Lula’s base to come over to his side in the last few weeks, but Lula is still ahead amongst people who care, first and foremost, about where their food is coming from next month. But that part of the story — the classic, extreme right base, the anti-democratic man — I think that is at the core of what Bolsonarismo is.

CONTRIBUTORS

Vincent Bevins is a journalist and the author of The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World.

Luke Savage is a staff writer at Jacobin.