Brazil’s Lula Was Overtaken by a Trump-Backed Nepo Baby

Bom dia, companheiros, though perhaps not as bom as we’d like, with the far right having narrowly won the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections held on Sunday.

There’ll be a second round in three weeks time, though. That’s when 80-year-old Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – known to all who love him as Lula – will fight again to retain the presidency from a competitor playing the generation game. To the left, a titan of Latin-American leftwing politics seeking his fourth presidential term. To the right, 45-year-old nepo-baby Flávio Bolsonaro, still campaigning in the shadow (literally) of his jailed pops, former president Jair Bolsonaro, who’s serving time for plotting a coup after Lula’s last victory. 

Speaking of coups. We can’t just have elections these days. We’ve got to have interference too. And the word on the streets is that one man in particular has been taking an unhealthy interest in this democratic exercise. Some clues: He’s rightwing, dishevelled, sits behind a desk all day, and regularly lashes out when things don’t go his way. 

US president Donald Trump has long been a supporter of the jailed Jair Bolsonaro. During his trial, Trump declared it a sham. Days later, he imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian exports to the US, again citing Bolsonaro. That was followed up with visa restrictions on the supreme court judge overseeing the case. When Bolsonaro was found guilty, Trump called him “a good man”. 

That ‘good man’ was, it’s said, fully aware of a plan to have Lula – the democratically-elected president – murdered..

In response, Lula turned Trump’s attempted extortion into a feature of his presidential campaign. After all, a politician who fought a military dictatorship, saw his friends and family tortured by secret police, and survived two trumped-up spells in prison wasn’t likely to be bothered by the petulant antics of a rich kid Manhattan real estate mogul with the soft-life doll-hands to prove it. 

In 2022, Lula’s extraordinary presidential campaign revolved around ‘barbecue and beer’ –  the idea of returning to the lives of ordinary Brazilians the simple things: rest, fun, time with friends and family. In short, “the pleasure of the most elementary things”. This time round, the focus has been less positive in response to Trump’s attempts to tip the scale: a turning inwards against those both beyond and within the borders, for whom Brazil is a political plaything.

“On one side, we have democracy and sovereignty,” Lula told supporters in São Paolo on Sunday, “on the other, barbarism and corruption.” It’s not clear this message has played as well with supporters. Polling ahead of the first-round vote consistently put Lula ahead of Bolsonaro Jr. The actual result, though, has reversed that position, with Bolsonaro taking 47% of the vote to Lula’s 45%. But as no candidate – and there were 12 of them – won more than half the vote, the top two will face off again. 

At present, Bolsonaro, despite being embroiled in a corruption scandal, is more likely to win, as many of the candidates now out of the race ran on rightwing platforms, two of them each winning 2.5% of the vote. They’ll likely urge their supporters to give their second round votes to Bolsonaro. 

For his part, Bolsonaro ran on a now-classic Trumpian platform, involving slashing state spending and releasing his father – alongside others involved in the coup plot – from prison. With petty crime a central concern for Brazilian voters, Flávio Bolsonaro pledged to build maximum-security prisons akin to those in El Salvador, while designating Brazilian gangs as terrorist organisations. That messaging received a boost in May, when he successfully lobbied Trump to list two of them under US counter-terror infrastructure. 

According to Brazil’s left, Flávio Bolsonaro, dubbed “Trump’s candidate” in recent campaign ads, is a sell-out, helping the US “to colonise Brazil, take our riches, steal our future and leave us in the dust”. 

Feverish paranoia? Well, there are receipts. Last year, the Trump administration published its National Security Strategy, where it made its aims for South American democracies fairly clear. Pledging strategic dominance of the western hemisphere, the so-called ‘Donroe doctrine’ promised support to political parties and movements aligned with its priorities. 

Flávio is not the only Bolsonaro to succeed in these elections. Jair Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, and his younger son, Carlos, both won seats in the senate. Meanwhile, his youngest son and namesake Jair Renan, was elected to the lower house of congress.

This generational upsurge in wins for the Bolsonaro family points to a wider problem for the Brazilian left. Lula will turn 81 later this month. In 2024, he suffered a fall that resulted in brain surgery. And yet, his Workers party has no obvious successor who can take his place next time if he loses this election. 

Which is not to say Lula isn’t doing his best. During this election, Lula created an entire subgenre of viral workout videos on social media, finally settling the question: do you even lift, bro?