The President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, opens the General Debate of the 66th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. New York, September 21, 2011. Image: Creative Commons. CC BY-SA 2.5
An ultra-right populist just won the presidency of Latin America’s largest country. Jair Bolsonaro’s promise to drastically ramp-up security, end corruption, and promote traditional family values resonated with Brazilians fed-up with years of government mismanagement, scandal, and spiraling crime.
The scale of the former army captain’s victory caught most pollsters off-guard. He won 55 percent of the popular vote compared to just 45 percent registered by Fernando Haddad, of the Workers’ Party. Bolsonaro’s little known Social Liberal Party, PSL, ballooned to 52 members in Congress while the Workers’ Party managed to hold on to 54 Congressional seats. The election transformed Brazil’s political landscape: several of the traditional parties that have dominated successive governments for the past three decades suffered catastrophic losses.
