The Agony of Brazil

A democracy battered from left and right

The poles: Lula and Bolsonaro

Dear readers: Today, Onward and Upward publishes its first guest post, although “post” is not the best word. It is a comprehensive essay on an important topic by an informed and judicious analyst.

Former president Jair Bolsonaro may be under house arrest for plotting a coup d’état, but Brazil’s democracy is not yet out of the woods.

In 2018, Jair Bolsonaro—a far-right congressman and former Army captain long regarded as a joke—was elected president on a wave of anti-establishment sentiment unleashed by the combination of a major corruption scandal and the deepest economic crisis in Brazilian history, both closely associated with more than a decade of Workers’ Party (PT) rule. The perfect storm engulfed the entire political establishment, but it hit the PT especially hard, culminating in the impeachment of then-president Dilma Rousseff—the handpicked successor of popular former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—and the arrest of Lula himself.

Bolsonaro’s administration was a disaster. He governed in permanent confrontation, assembled a cabinet of military officers and far-right ideologues, and engaged in corruption himself. Instinctively contrarian and prone to mimic Donald Trump—whom he idolized—he sabotaged public-health measures during the pandemic and worked to erode electoral legitimacy by insisting that Brazil’s electronic voting machines were rigged. He also waged war on the press and built a parallel information ecosystem to spread propaganda and inflame his followers.

To stave off impeachment, Bolsonaro installed a friendly Prosecutor General and struck a deal with those he once demonized: the Big Center, i.e., the alphabet soup of pragmatic, right-of-center, pork-loving parties that dominate Brazil’s political landscape, and the legislature in particular. By giving it the keys to the government—and most of the federal budget—he helped further swing the balance of power toward Congress, essentially outsourcing the administration while staging motorbike rallies and spending weekends on jet skis. With Congress coopted by Bolsonaro, the Supreme Court took it upon itself to curb the president’s excesses, becoming, along with the press, the primary object of his ire.

The Court took a two-pronged approach. First, it engaged in course correction.

One of the factors that led to the rise of Bolsonaro was Operation Car Wash, a sweeping anti-corruption probe that uncovered a kickback scheme involving state-owned oil company Petrobras and most major construction firms during the Lula and Rousseff years. Hugely popular, the operation turned the federal judge who oversaw it, Sérgio Moro, into a national hero and implicated not only the PT but politicians across the spectrum, destabilizing the entire party system.

Yet the probe’s methods were controversial from the start: it relied heavily on aggressive plea bargains, strategic leaks, and the extensive use of pre‑trial detentions—tactics critics argued stretched the limits of due process. Even so, the Supreme Court had ratified most of its actions. Only later, when evidence emerged that the operation had become politicized and that there had been improper coordination between Judge Moro and prosecutors, did the Court reverse course, overturning convictions and revising its own legal interpretations.

Many observers praised the Court for finally addressing problems they had highlighted for years. Others—including some who had supported the reversal in principle—criticized it for throwing the baby out with the bathwater, arguing that invalidating critical evidence wiped out major convictions and erased billions in fines. A few critics went even further, accusing the Court of political bias. And, indeed, the Court’s shift was as legal as it was political: its most consequential effect was restoring Lula’s freedom and political rights at a moment when he was widely regarded as the only figure popular enough to stop Bolsonaro from winning reelection in 2022.

That was the first prong: the course correction. The second was the Court’s adoption of a “militant democracy” stance—the idea that democratic institutions may take exceptional measures to defend themselves against actors who seek to use democratic freedoms to erode democracy from within. In practice, this meant the Court assumed an unusually proactive role in policing threats to the constitutional order.

The clearest example was a broad “Fake News Inquiry” the Court opened to investigate coordinated disinformation campaigns and intimidation efforts aimed at undermining the electoral system. By launching the inquiry on its own initiative—bypassing the usual prosecutorial channels—the Court granted itself unusually wide investigative authority. Under this mandate, it authorized sweeping measures, from search warrants and social‑media restrictions to preventive arrests. Supporters saw these actions as necessary to contain organized attacks on democratic institutions; critics argued they pushed the boundaries of judicial authority and risked conflating the defense of democracy with judicial overreach.

In 2022, Bolsonaro lost to Lula by a sliver. His supporters reacted with outrage and disbelief, blocking roads and demanding military intervention. The movement’s anger exploded on January 8, 2023—one week after Lula was sworn in—when thousands of protesters who had spent months camped outside barracks stormed Brasília and wrecked Congress, the presidential palace, and the Supreme Court.

Investigators later uncovered a full-fledged coup attempt involving draft decrees, pressure on military commanders, and operational planning aimed at reversing the vote and even assassinating figures such as Lula and Supreme Court justices. Although many legal experts and media outlets supported the convictions, they also criticized aspects of the trial as overly politicized or procedurally irregular.

Still, the evidence against Bolsonaro and his aides was overwhelming. They were ultimately convicted for their role in the plot, and Bolsonaro is now serving his sentence under house arrest.

Democratic normalcy, however, did not return.

The movement that lifted Bolsonaro to the presidency lives on: a coalition of cultural conservatives, evangelicals, and anti-establishment voters. We are now in another election year, and Lula is running again—it would be his fourth term. The first round of voting will take place on October 4, and if a two-candidate runoff is needed, that will be on October 25.

The cult of personality around Bolsonaro is strong enough to give his son Flávio, a senator and his anointed political heir, a commanding advantage over rivals in the same lane, making him the clear favorite to secure a spot in the runoff. Until recently, most polls had him running essentially neck and neck with Lula, with some even showing him narrowly ahead in the second round.

As has been the case since Bolsonaro’s rise, the few remaining centrists tried to field a more moderate, “Third Way” candidate to break the polarization between the PT and the far right. With no significant party of their own, they hoped to do this through the PSD (Social Democratic Party), one of the largest parties of the Big Center. But Gilberto Kassab, the PSD’s boss, had other plans.

Despite pressure from the centrists—including prominent business figures and the mainstream economists who helped stabilize Brazil’s economy in the 1990s during Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s administration—Kassab chose the conservative Ronaldo Caiado over a more liberal name, with Kassab himself expected to take the running-mate slot. With an increasingly conservative electorate, a right-leaning candidate better positions the PSD to maximize its seats in Congress, where the balance of power currently lies. By weakening Flávio, this move also helps Lula, keeping open a path for Kassab to remain in government—his party currently holds three ministries—into a possible fourth Lula term.

This leaves Lula facing a divided Right: Flávio Bolsonaro remains the clear favorite, while Caiado—who has so far failed to gain traction—and other minor candidates compete for space in the same anti-PT lane. They differ in style but converge on fiercely anti‑PT rhetoric and support for amnesty for Bolsonaro and the January 8 rioters. Even though the election is likely to hinge on the centrist vote, for the first time there will be no centrist candidate even in the first round. The result may thus depend less on enthusiasm than on which side centrist voters dislike more—hardly ideal for Lula, whose comeback has stirred little passion of its own.

Lula’s victory in 2022 was always more a rejection of Bolsonaro than an embrace of his return—and his government has underdelivered. His appeal relies on nostalgia and the mythology surrounding his persona, but many voters are too young to remember his first terms, and his class-struggle language resonates less with today’s workers, who are far removed from his old unionized base. Despite having campaigned at the head of a broad pro-democracy coalition, he sidelined centrists from his sprawling cabinet, handing secondary ministries to the Big Center while reserving the core for the PT. The government has often seemed adrift, rehashing old ideas, wasting energy on infighting, and picking losing political battles, while doubling down on the PT’s old spending-heavy instincts and turning a delicate inherited economic situation into a looming fiscal crisis. Congress has worsened the picture through irresponsible lawmaking, and the Supreme Court through corporatist rulings that protect judicial earnings above constitutional limits.

Lula’s weakness was further underlined in late April, when the Senate rejected his most recent Supreme Court nominee—the first such defeat in more than a century, and a humiliating rebuke for a president who once dominated congressional politics—and Congress overrode his veto of a bill reducing penalties for Bolsonaro and others convicted over the coup plot and January 8 attacks.

The government has blamed its unpopularity on poor communication—and it has indeed been poor—but no amount of spin can make a bad package look good. The government has also been rolling out voter-friendly measures—from renewed consumer-debt relief and farmer-debt renegotiation to labor proposals such as reducing the workweek from six days to five—in an effort to make voters feel material improvement before October. But not even populist policies have yet produced the intended boost: instead of the promised beer and picanha, Brazilians have found themselves indebted and paying more for groceries.

The government’s position was further complicated by the tacit alliance it forged with the Supreme Court against Bolsonaro. Even after Lula’s reelection and Bolsonaro’s conviction, imprisonment, and subsequent placement under house arrest, the militant-democracy genie the Court let out of the bottle never went back in. Instead of exercising self-restraint, the Court has increasingly used its powers against perceived adversaries and to shield itself from scrutiny, even as it finds itself at the center of Brazil’s latest corruption scandal.

Liquidated in 2025 after fraudulent, non-existent loan portfolios came to light, Banco Master has become a loose cannon in Brazilian politics, at the center of a multibillion-real banking scandal. Its owner, Daniel Vorcaro, currently in pretrial detention, cultivated ties across all branches of government and is negotiating a potentially explosive plea deal. At least two Supreme Court justices are seriously implicated, damaging the Court’s legitimacy and putting impeachment of justices at the top of the opposition’s agenda. The bank’s connections cut across the political class, reaching figures such as Lula’s chief of staff, the recently resigned justice minister (himself a former Supreme Court justice), congressional leaders, and Ciro Nogueira, Bolsonaro’s former chief of staff and a Big Center boss who had been floated as a possible Flávio running mate.

The scandal has also reached Flávio himself, raising questions about his electoral viability. The Intercept reported that he had asked Vorcaro for money tied to Dark Horse, an English-language biopic about his father starring Jim Caviezel. Leaked WhatsApp audio later showed him personally pressing Vorcaro for the money after he had denied ties to the banker. Flávio denies wrongdoing and says the relationship was limited to a private investment deal, but he was forced to backtrack after acknowledging that he had visited Vorcaro at home while the banker was under electronic monitoring following his initial arrest.

Press reports based on the Federal Police investigation say Vorcaro was the project’s main financier, with around R$61 million routed to a Texas-based investment fund linked to associates of Flávio’s brother, former congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro. Investigators are reportedly examining whether the money was actually used for the production of the film—one of the most expensive Brazilian film projects ever—or diverted to support Eduardo’s self-exile in the United States. From there, Eduardo used his connections in the MAGA world to lobby for sanctions against Brazilian authorities as part of a pressure campaign to free his father—an effort that became entangled with Trump’s tariffs against Brazil.

The first major poll after the revelations showed Lula opening a clear lead over Flávio, while the episode rattled allies and revived talk on the right of alternatives to his candidacy. Whether the damage lasts is another question: if the news cycle moves on, voters may yet forget.

Banco Master is not the only corruption scandal. A parallel scheme involving the country’s pension system is also swallowing Brazil’s powerful and may even reach one of Lula’s sons. With so many interests converging, Brazil’s political class is moving to hobble investigations: congressmen turn inquiry committees into clown shows, the Prosecutor General looks the other way, and the Supreme Court uses its self-assigned powers to shield itself and its allies.

As the incumbent, Lula bears much of the political burden for the current disarray—from the corruption scandals and a lack of trust in institutions to everyday worries such as affordability and public safety. Even if he is not fully responsible, Lula is hardly an innocent bystander. Bolsonaro’s contempt for democratic restraints is cruder and more openly authoritarian—an acute threat that culminated in a coup attempt and required an immediate institutional response. Lula’s is softer, but real: a chronic condition that Brazil’s institutions have long had to manage.

Far from the democratic standard-bearer he likes to present himself as, Lula has always treated institutions less as neutral constraints than as terrain to be occupied, bent, and negotiated around—through patronage, dealmaking, and corruption that helped sustain a broad congressional coalition the PT could not hold together on ideology or policy alone. His indulgence toward regimes he perceives as leftist or anti-imperialist such as Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela underscores how selective his democratic language can be. That does not make him equivalent to Bolsonaro. But it does mean the 2026 election is not shaping up as a clean contest between an anti-democratic camp and a democratic one.

For all the drama, the deeper problem in Brazil is that its crisis is no longer confined to one faction or one institution. The country enters the 2026 election with a compromised, unbalanced, and discredited political establishment and a society that is still deeply polarized after years of crises, scandals, and radicalization. What is at stake is not merely who wins but whether Brazil can begin to recover faith both in democracy and in the institutions meant to uphold it, along with a shared sense that law is a constraint on power rather than just another weapon in the hands of whoever happens to wield it.

Andre Spritzer is a political scientist, computer scientist, and writer working at the intersection of politics, data visualization, and journalism. He holds a BSc in politics and international relations and a PhD in computer science, specializing in data visualization and human–computer interaction. His academic work has appeared in a variety of international journals, and his articles on Brazilian and international politics have appeared throughout Brazil.