Judging by both the press coverage, the testimonies of friends and social networks, the day after of the elections was tense. It started with #demitaumpetista, but it was a roll with the justice of the work, so they moved on to Sleeping Zap, parody of Sleeping Giants. Ordinary citizens would organize lists of PT traders and distribute them on WhatsApp in order to organize a boycott. A friend says that in the condominium where she lives, in the South Zone of Rio, the landlord organized a list of PT merchants and the residents had already canceled a nearby bakery.
Since that in my city the polls pointed to 70% Lula, the average tweeter, who thinks that Brazil is equal to the metropolises, will conclude that I am fried, or that I live hiding my positions policies. To this I say that neither one thing (I’m not fried), nor the other (I don’t hide my political positions), and more: a candidate for federal deputy for the PSOL makes a point of telling every passerby who passes by when I’m with him. He says like this: “She is Bolsonaro, but I love her!”
Cordial relations, impersonal system
Our electoral system has a side effect that has become known as the “Tiririca effect”. It is enough to take a candidate with many votes for a party to make several deputies. The PSOL lives off of it, but on a smaller scale. He doesn’t have a Tiririca with millions of votes; instead, he has a charismatic figure that people like for reasons other than politics. An artist, a singer. In the aforementioned case, a reggae singer who was very famous in the 90 years, but who remains known to anyone who likes from reggae. The singer was very happy and felt very honored with the invitation to run for a seat in the Chamber. The friends at the bar were in disbelief. The older brothers, angry, because they are on the right. I warned: “I will not vote for you, no!” Haughty, he replied that he didn’t want my vote.
I traveled before the first round, so I couldn’t know at the time what his policy would be in relation to friends and family who are voters of Bolsonaro. The last time I spoke to him before traveling, I found him happy because now the brothers accepted the candidacy.
I returned right after the elections, and what was my surprise when find out that friends had voted for him and Bolsonaro. I expressed my surprise and the singer soon ratted out his friend: “He said he would beat me up if I won!”
It was true. One of his friends voted for him just to make him happy, saying he wouldn’t get elected. But if a catastrophe happened and the crazy beauty was elected, he would order a beating. I had the opportunity to launch a controversy: what if the reggae singer tried to get elected councilor? So, yes, the matter was serious. One of the friends concluded that the beating would have to be heavier in this case, but he would vote anyway. Another was in doubt. It was one thing to send him to Brasília, for the people there in Brasília to make do with him. Another, much more serious, was to have him as a councilor here.
I even warned that every vote given to a friend served to put someone from the PSOL in Brasília; it wasn’t just an innocuous vow. If they took it seriously, I don’t know.
In the program, NGOs
I found campaign material pasted from him in the city. What promises? In addition to “setting Babilônia in Brasília on fire”, the material attributed to the singer a great interest in the areas of education and culture. Specifically, he advocated “improvement in education , with support for projects carried out mainly by non-governmental organizations.” In other words, the proposal that the PSOL staff prepared for him is to deliver Education to NGOs. To be on the left, today, is to defend a minimal state and maximum NGOs. The candidate “is an advocate of cannabidiol as a fundamental substance for the treatment of serious diseases”.
The singer is in fact famous as a pothead. However, he is also keen to warn youth that cocaine kills; that he himself didn’t die only because the woman saved him. He emphatically urges young people not to go near cocaine. In addition, the singer discovered that “being in PSOL is being in the right place to make the language of reggae understood, fighting all kinds of oppressions, especially those that pertain to the black community.” He has no history of politicization — not even racially. And “black community” is a translation of black community, a term that makes sense in the US, where ethnic communities exist within cities. In the case of Brazilians, it makes sense to speak of the Japanese community, the Jewish community, and perhaps (depending on the region) the Northeastern community; but “black community” is an expression without a head and a head, even more so in Bahia. The singer himself is too clear to be singled out as a black man. He is black in the US, or, who knows, in Joinville.
So, the picture we have is: there is a figure that is well liked by the city; that he is a good person (so I consider him); who has a reputation for being a beauty freak (the campaign material itself says he’s “the freak who knew”); who has a fan base across the state; and who has no history of politicization. Then PSOL appears with a chat spider of running for deputy to defend education and be against racism. Who says against education and in favor of racism?
Then they put the guy to run, they do the “favor” of detailing the platform and that’s it. Formally, we have five thousand votes for NGOs to take care of education and spread the racialization of the people.
Changes the system or the people?
Some people think that our people are very bad because they are not studied. I already think that the more you study, the more chances you have of believing that women have a penis. I have never seen an illiterate who believed that a woman has a penis; this is something for those who have a doctorate or believe in “Science.” If we go back in time, people studied to believe in communism, in scientific racism, in a bunch of disastrous nonsense. I don’t believe that education should be an end in itself, and I don’t think that an uneducated people are a bad people.
I think the worst possible scenario is Europe: it has more than half of the population with a degree and an elite that doesn’t care about its people, willing to call a good part of it fascist and fight “racism” by letting illegal immigrants do what they want with the population. The elite are believed to be well educated. But when an immense portion of the population is educated, it is as if the entire world is an elite. There, nobody is elite; and what there is is this mass that follows the newspapers bovinely and feels much superior for that. Superior to whom, pale face, if you are mass? Superior to the illiterate? To the hungry African, to the northeast of the grotões? Mass that repeats CNN and the like is mass. And it is more narrow-minded than the rural poor, because it has no attachment to common sense or traditional authorities.
Well then. In view of the story narrated here, the opinion often appears that the people need to be educated to learn to vote. What education are you talking about? I think that in the case in question it is before information ; to explain what the electoral system is like. Still, it’s possible that they know that the parties take the vote, and they just think it’s the same thing, because all politicians are the same. If all politicians are the same, there’s nothing wrong with voting for my crazy friend who won’t even be elected. Thus, it is rather a communication problem. The electorate was not reached ; That’s why you think all politicians are the same. It takes work to prove them wrong.
Another thing worth noting is that state coercion is less felt around here. Let’s say that there in Brasilia a law is passed saying that the women’s bathroom is for those who declare themselves a woman. In the capital, if someone with a penis claims to be a woman and enters the girls’ toilets at a school, parents and girls are sure to protest. But will download MP and TV; It’s going to be a hell of a headache. Here, it won’t do anything. (The voter even planned to order a beating from a federal official.) So it’s only natural that the most progressive projects seem like a fantasy rather than a real thing. The specter of legal abortion is a much more tangible problem in anonymous metropolises than in these parts, where everyone knows each other, everyone judges themselves and there aren’t many secrets.
On the other hand, I believe it makes more sense to change the system than to change the people. It is necessary to design a system in which voters elect politicians they know. In large states like Bahia, the idea of simply electing the most voted does not seem good, because that way the elected deputies would focus on Salvador.
As for voting for ideology instead of person… I remember that in 2018 right-wing liberals who thought like that voted for Amoedo.
