Latin Analysis: The Coronavirus effect on Brazil
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The early 2000s were a thriving period for Brazil. Its inclusion as part of the BRICS had promised great economic and social development for the country and had positioned it as one of the strongest Latin American states.
Despite the positive forecasts, Brazil faced difficulties in 2015 and 2016, as hosting of the World Cup and the Olympics – under Dilma Roussef’s administration – had caused financial difficulties for the nation. However, with great support from the business sector, Bolsonaro had promised to bring Brazil back to the path of greatness. His promise proved so credible, that not only did he get an overwhelming majority of the votes, but the Brazilian currency, the Real, spiked as it became clear that he had won the 2018 presidential elections. Hence, he had won the trust of the Brazilian people and the confidence of investors abroad.
Nowadays, after roughly a year of Bolsonaro as head of the Brazilian government, the international community has kept talking about the country - though with a significantly less positive outlook, strongly colored by the COVID-19 crisis and the president’s management of the pandemic.
Bolsonarismo in Coronavirus Times
The Brazilian president’s leadership – as well as the rest of the world’s heads of governments and International Organisations – has been strongly contested this 2020 due to the unprecedented emergence of COVID-19. Bolsonaro, like many of the globe’s populist leaders, refused to close borders or take any preventive measures to deal with the pandemic, arguing that the priority was to protect first and foremost the country’s economy. As the virus proved to be highly deadly, most governments ultimately agreed to enforce lockdown to its citizens. However, Bolsonaro has not been one to change his original strategy.
Considering that Brazil is the second most-affected country in the world (only next to the US), it was natural to expect that not all parties and politicians would approve of the president’s decision. Domestic conflicts have significantly intensified within the last months, as even though governors of numerous Brazilian states have tried to impose a lockdown and have publicly requested federal support, Bolsonaro’s business as usual policy has resulted in almost 2 millions of people sick and more than 75,000 deaths.
Consequently, not only has Bolsonaro’s decision been criticized on an international level, but politicians from several Brazilian parties, including his own, Alianza por Brazil. Even within officials of his own administration, Bolsonaro’s decisions have been challenged. For this reason, Luis Henrique Mandetta – who strongly requested lockdown measures to be implemented – was fired when the virus started to peak, and his predecessor, Nelson Teich, resigned after less than a month of holding the position.
The constant emergence of conflicts between local and national administrations has shown an evident lack of political domestic coordination. The fact that Brazilians receive contradicting indications from different government officials and the huge negative international spotlight Brazil has been receiving, has undoubtedly taken a high toll on Bolsonaro’s public approval, which is now less than 30%.
Bolsonaristas losing faith in the politician has caused a renovated support for the opposition and higher rates of social instability. Hence, taking into account the attachment of Bolsonaro to Brazil’s military, there has been strong speculation that he could soon be using military intervention to “keep the peace”. This possibility has further enhanced national discontent and threatens to harm the stability and independence of national institutions.
The economy comes first
Bolsonaro’s primary argument for not taking any significant measures to control the spread of the virus was to protect the economy. Nevertheless, it is important to consider that, even before the COVID-19 outbreak, international investor’s trust in Brazil had already been weakening. This was the case as Bolsonaro’s government had announced several initiatives that involved the deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest, which had consequently called the attention of many environmental and indigenous peoples’ rights organizations. Therefore, countries such as UK, Norway, Denmark, the US, and France (among others) had established that this situation incremented the investment risk on the Brazilian markets as well as made the country a rather uncertain capital destination.
As might be predictable, given that a considerable amount of the population is sick with COVID-19 and the number of deaths is expected to keep rising, international investors’ trust has completely crumbled. Today, Brazil has lost more than 38.143 million USD of foreign direct investment and this number is not projected to improve in the following months (or even years). As a matter of fact, there have been recent forecasts that state that the Portuguese-speaking nation should prepare for one of the deepest economic crisis of its history to-date. Inevitably, this will parallelly undermine the growth of the entire South American region.
National and international authorities keep urging Bolsonaro to react to the pandemic (especially now that he has tested positive himself) to protect Brazilians, particularly those who belong to indigenous groups and other minorities. It is similarly argued that the economy of the nation can’t be expected to improve unless the country has a healthy population. Thus, this situation keeps undermining the initially high expectations that international investors had had on the Brazilian markets at the start of Bolsonaro’s presidency, and it is indeed doubtful that a future military intervention would improve neither investor’s trust nor social stability. As time goes by, the 2000s speculations of extraordinary social and economic growth seem less attainable than ever for Brazil.
