The election of Fernando Collora in 1989 seems to have marked the beginning of a line of presidential successors, in which there was inevitably a choice by way of refusal. Collor, with just under 30% of the vote in the first round, defeated Lulu, with just over 15%, also in the first round.

More than half of the citizens were unable to express their true interests and ideals, and in the second round they were forced to choose between candidates who did not get even half of the votes. A candidate was elected without a party, without a government team with experience in public administration, without a political career that showed the coincidence of his promises of radical change and his ability to fulfill them.

Lula, who did not have any managerial experience, escaped this fate, because he led a party with the appropriate electorate, was able to surround himself with competent cadres, both outside and within his party. He tried to reconcile the leftist banners of the PT with conservative interests and liberal orientations. Despite his recognized skills, he was unable to integrate his party’s radical expectations into effective economic policy management and, in spite of the growth of the global economy, passed on to his successor an economy in perilous decline.

Dilma was not as lucky as her mentor, who threw her a party, but neither her license to lead nor her ability to reconcile the extremist claims of the PT factions with the conservative interests and liberal preferences of their cast. Initially, the budgetary balance corresponds to Lula’s term. He also lacked relevant management experience to inspire confidence. In doing so, he handed over to his successor a country deeply divided and deeply unhappy with parties and governments, and this time with an economy in recession.

Michel Temer, despite the important reforms that marked his short term and the restoration of stability and economic growth he provided, reiterated the polarized and extremist political scenario of Sarney’s succession and the decline of lulism. This scenario combines the ideal electoral environment for adventurous candidacies and the background for the party fragmentation that led to the election of the current government.

A large segment of public opinion, political leaders, newsrooms, opinion polling institutions and academia seem to regard the recurrence of the Bolsonaro-Lulizmo controversy as fatal, ascribing to it the inevitability of opting out. The apparent repetition reflects a strategy deliberately adopted by those who benefit from this unfounded faith in our political history.

Let’s see how the current succession process differs from the 2018 campaign.First, it became clear that Lula and Bolsonaro have chosen themselves as ideal partners in polarization and are seeking to make it inevitable. However, if it worked in 2018, why not in 2022?

Second, because party leaders and their candidates have already realized that the fragmentation of the party was not the result of polarization, but rather the wrong decisions of political leaders. This led to the fact that an appropriate number of parties met to discuss the issue of succession, albeit without striving for any programmatic convergence and without moving towards a coalition. This proactive search for convergence, coupled with an awareness of the deliberate nature of polarization, is another step towards overcoming 2018.

None of the conditions mentioned above would be decisive if they were not reflected in relation to candidates who, after all, compete for the right to vote. Both, however, contribute to two differences from the electoral environment three years ago.

The first is the emergence of what has been called “new politicians” as opposed to the supposed “new politics” being pursued by the same old foxes. They are candidates closer to young voters, more receptive to new social, environmental and personal agendas, among other things, which allows them to attract votes from an electorate that tends to reject political representation in general and therefore compete with those they make. … the use of popular discontent for self-assertion against everything and everyone.

The other is what some call “depolarization,” that is, instead of competing with one of the main characters, the candidate challenges him in his own realm. This may refer to Ciro Gomes vying with Lula to get better favors for the moderates against Bolsonar, or Sergio Moro vying with Bolsonar to coax an anti-lulism center.

The risk they face is that in this way the left-most or right-most electorate can be divided, making them impossible for a second round. It seems reasonable to believe that formal party alliances between center-left or center-right parties will fulfill this role better than single candidates.

A succession campaign cannot be resolved before it starts. The defeat of political adventurism is near.

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SENATOR (PSDB-SP)