That would be me? I’m European but am currently living in Rio de Janeiro. Some 8 years in total experience in Brazil, in two stretches, in Rio and in Brasilia.
Before getting to the specific “what happens now” question in the OP, in my opinion one of the biggest problems with discussions about Bolsonaro (hereafter Bozo, as it’s shorter and in common usage here) is that media, and by extension those who read/watch them, discuss him with a base level of respect he doesn’t merit. It’s similar to the Trump and Johnson problems, where Trump was/is referred to typically as something like “billionaire real estate developer/reality show star” rather than “serially bankrupt alleged billionaire, whose fortune would have been larger invested in stocks than attempting to do business”, and Johnson was typically referred to as “former mayor of London Boris Johnson” rather than “liar Alexander ‘Boris’ Johnson, fired from journalism jobs for lying”, except for Bozo it’s on steroids. There is no insult, curse-word, or general negative moniker that doesn’t apply to that person, apart from possibly “necrophiliac” and “regicide”. (I used to also exclude “pedophile”, but then: Bolsonaro says he 'felt a spark' with '14-year-old girls' - 17/10/2022 - Brazil - Folha )
So to get closer to the point, Bozo isn’t “right-wing former paratrooper Jair Bolsonaro”. Slightly more correct IIRC would be “failed gym teacher”, and he left the army as just a captain in a country where promotion is mostly by seniority, which is impressive. But what every resident of Rio, and most of Brazil, knows but the media can’t properly report due to the risk of libel laws when an allegation isn’t proven, is that Bozo is above all (allegedly, etc. if the federal police is reading) a miliciano, specifically a leader in the milicia.
Crime in Brazilian cities, especially Rio, is divided into traficantes and milicia. The former are drug traffickers, with side lines in rent/taxes in favelas, robbery, and the samba schools; mostly from destitute backgrounds, which correlates with race here, and mostly young (since children can’t be punished under the law, and under-18 teens can at most serve a few years in juvie for crimes, even muder). The latter group is typically/originally made up for former soldiers, off-duty police, and similar, and ostensibly exist to protect property and fight the traficantes to keep drugs out of their community. In practice they set up protection rackets, gambling, “tax” services (i.e. since we don’t buy the local milicia’s preferred fiber internet package, every month or two they stop by outside to cut our cable), and crucially, set up death squads - to murder suspected traficantes because they believe the justice system doesn’t address the problem (and unfortunately there is some truth to that), but also to murder prosecutors, police, and judges that aren’t on board.
Bozo has to be seen in that context. When we define bad world leaders in a few words, then for example, Trump is a narcissistic idiot; Johnson is a liar; Putin is a violent mob boss; and Bozo is a miliciano. Pretending that he’s anything else is like calling Al Capone a tax cheat. It’s technically true, but doesn’t touch his essence.
Again, the problem is outright proof, same as with Capone, but for example: This article refers to a story where an ex-policeman, one of the most wanted milicianos, was killed by police. Bozo had him decorated. He couldn’t accept the decoration at the time because he was in prison for murder. (Acquitted on appeal) Bolsonaro diz que a Polícia Militar da Bahia matou o ex-PM Adriano da Nóbrega | Jornal Nacional | G1
Here’s a case where a politican was elected. In the Brazilian system, there’s usually (always?) a suplente, a backup or vice-whatever, in case the elected person can’t take on the job. The suplente, a miliciano, wanted the position for himself, so he had the elected congressperson murdered along with their family. In the vote to impeach/remove the murderer from congress, who spoke in his defence? Bozo. A confusão de Bolsonaro sobre acusação de defender estuprador | VEJA
There’s plenty of other accusations of Bozo being involved in conspiracies to commit murder in Rio, as well as the allegation that he was dismissed from the army for attempted terrorism (planning to blow up military installations) over a pay dispute (that also gets fuzzy on appeal, he was jailed over another issue and not ultimately dismissed in disgrace, but the police says the bombing plans were there and were his É falso que Bolsonaro foi expulso do Exército e preso por terrorismo ), and of course the long list of speeches in favour of the military dictatorship, torture/murder of leftists, and all the other crap that leaves his mouth. That’s without touching on his policy of burning down the Amazon to make unproductive cattle farms, letting illegal gold panning (garimpo) poison the rivers and the panners murder indigenous communities, decimating productive industry, and letting hundreds of thousands die unnecessarily with his Covid response, and so much more, all of which are better addressed in global media as they are immune to libel charges. Like, here’s where Bozo blames NGOs for climate crimes in the Amazon at the UN without evidence: Sem provas, Bolsonaro culpa ONGs por crimes ambientais durante cúpula da ONU | Política | G1
A final bit of context: Brazil is a multiparty democracy that forms coalition governments, so there’s no need for Red vs Blue voting like with US Democrats vs Republicans or UK Labour vs Tory. Governing coalitions have changed multiple times. If Brazil(ians) genuinely wanted a plausible conservative leader (whether in the social or economic sense) there’s no lack of choice, even in this month’s first round of voting. That out of all possible candidates, out of a population of ~214 million people, anybody wants this fucking guy is unbelievable. Even the military have been fairly lukewarm (publicly) in general to Bozo. His voter base is evangelicals, whose for-profit church pastors tell them that the best defender of evangelical morals is a (shitty) Catholic on his 3rd wife who gleefully speaks in favour of rape, racism, and sexism; people who hear the hateful rhetoric, and say yes please, I’ll have some of that; the agricultural lobby who profit from the non-enforcement of Brazil’s on-paper-actually-pretty-good environmental laws; those who benefit from the colossal scale of the Bozo government corruption; and idiots who believe that everyone left of Bozo is a literal communist who wants mandatory abortions for all, mandatory sex changes for youth, and hands-on gay sex education in school.
So at long last we come to your question, what’s next? Lula is, simultaneously, the best leader Brazil has ever had (the other candidates in my opinion are a near-fascist, Getúlio Vargas, and Emperor Pedro II who let slavery continue until 1888 - so, to put it mildly, not great), and no prize. The PT government was also corrupt, just not on Bozo’s scale. Lula is actually pretty centrist, the best things his government ever did was maintain and/or expand previous governments’ good policies (the plano real which reformed the currency, and by extension, the economy; and the bolsa escola, which became the bolsa familia, which provided a social benefit that lifted millions out of poverty), while the tradition had been to scrap everything from the predecessor and starting over, badly. The economic boom in Lula’s first governing period was due to the boost in commodity prices - that’s not likely to save Lula now, and the cooling of the economy was a major factor in Dilma’s (Lula’s appointed seat-warmer, though that didn’t work out for him as planned) impeachment and removal. Finally, the first round elected a vast swathe of fascist-adjacent Bozo supporters as governors, congresscritters, and senators for both the national and state congresses. Lula, if he survives to 1 January, will face strong opposition on the federal and state levels from these people until he (I would say inevitably) bribes the centrão, which has been the only way to govern in recent decades. After all, they’re the guys who sat on the 145 requests for Bozo’s impeachment in the federal congress ( Pedidos de impeachment de Bolsonaro chegam a 145: um a cada 9 dias ) The first Lula government had the mensalão scandal ( Escândalo do mensalão – Wikipédia, a enciclopédia livre. ) to accomplish the same thing, bribing Congress to vote with the PT government. Fun fact, the guy who denounced the mensalão is a Bozo ally who just tried to commit suicide-by-cop by attacking police with rifle fire and grenades. He’s in house arrest.
Point being: Lula was the best choice and best chance to win against what I genuinely think is the worst world leader that has ever been democratically elected. The upcoming Lula government will either be a failure, or will resort to corruption for governance, or will be a corrupt failure. Bozo and his allies do not have a single redeeming feature between them, yet I have to live with the fact that half of my neighbours want him in power. I have to wind up some investments here, and then my (Brazilian) fiancee and I are out of here.
