The real losers in the presidential election in Brazil

Was it the research institutes? Yup. The specialists/analysts who blindly relied on these same institutes? Also. But no one was more devastated from this first round of the presidential elections in Brazil than the advisers to the European and US governments. All, without risk of being unfair, guided their steps with their eyes on an electoral scenario, as it is revealed today, designed much more by what was desired than by what was seen.

The configuration of the second round between Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio da Silva shows that Western foreign policy urgently needs to adjust its sights. The bet that Lula was already elected reveals that, in general, the interpretation that diplomacy and presidential advisors make of Brazil is built on paper pillars. Information they read and see in the press, which in turn relied on the “science” of research institutes. Institutes that only keep doing what they do because they are overrated by the press. A feedback system that when it errs (and how it errs) causes destinations to reproduce themselves at an unbelievably high level.

The Europeans kept a sanitary distance from Brazil in punishment of President Bolsonaro. It would be fleeting and then everything would go back to normal. The Biden administration has reached superlative levels of neglect. He smeared the relationship with Brazil to the point of jeopardizing the United States’ own interests in the region. A bet with tones of high school tantrums that, in addition to being unproductive, can leave irreparable consequences.

By closing the doors to Brazil, they allowed so many others to be opened. And in the case of a group of countries with no appreciation for freedom, democracies and an infinity of other civilizing values. China, Russia and Iran, for example, are swimming in arm’s length.

While western democracies bet against Bolsonaro, countries with no sympathy with the United States and Europe strengthened their diplomacy, expanded business and “ kidnapped” some political and business leaders based on a link of interests and money that are very difficult to break.

In the event of Jair Bolsonaro’s victory, advisers to the governments of the United States and European countries will have to stop behaving if they had just left a student union of those commanded by PCdoB and understand that the relationship with Brazil goes beyond sympathy with the current president.

Lula’s victory, in turn, hides a contradiction. Although Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron and their European Union colleagues clearly prefer Lula, the PT does not have them at the top of his priorities in the bilateral relationship.

That same trio of anti-Western countries, which gained ground with the exile imposed on Brazil, will be the one that will advance the most in the region with PTismo. This time without any kind of artifice to hide their advance of and their interests in Brazil.

Whether with Lula or with Bolsonaro – if the United States and Europe do not change Brazil’s removal policy , in a scenario of the current president’s second term – Brazil’s relationship with them will be more or less like that of the suffering of the late Marília Mendonça, who says: “Who I want, doesn’t want me. Who wants me, I won’t. No one will suffer alone. Everyone (in this case, the relationship with the US and Europe) will suffer”. Minus of course China and Russia.

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