Reader Q&A: After Lula’s sensational victory in Brazil’s presidential election, the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent answers your questions
Having lost the first round of Brazil’s presidential election to far right rival Flávio Bolsonaro, incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva spectacularly triumphed in the second. What comes next for Brazil? The Guardian’s Tom Phillips is answering your questions now.Ask a question: log in or sign up here to comment, or email conversations@theguardian.comPatric Mauz says: How can Brazil ‘shore up’ the democratic process against outside influences? The natural resources that Brazil stewards is a massive amount and it is so very obvious that wealthy outside parties would very much like to have a say in that.
Datacentres and natural resources are more important than the Amazon rainforest or local native tribes to those who have the wealth and power. It will only get worse and that is terrible for future generations.Tom: I think the key answer to this question is in the first speech Lula gave after the result was announced on Sunday night.
“This was an election in which we had to overcome outside interference, through digital platforms, which we are going to have to regulate,” Lula told us at the São Paulo hotel where he was following the vote count. “It is unacceptable that we don’t recognise that crimes committed in the digital world must be treated the same as real-life crime.
We cannot have monstrously huge corporations making millions and billions, paying zero taxes in this country, and trying to steer the outcome of its elections,” Lula went on.Clearly – not just in the lead-up to this election, but stretching back several years – social networks in Brazil and elsewhere – have been skewing their output in favour of far-right candidates and movements.Tom: Yes, there has been a historic reduction of deforestation, not just in the Amazon but also in the Cerrado savannah at the heart of Brazil.
This has been the result of a major push by Lula’s government, under the leadership of former environment minister Marina Silva, who may now return to government having failed to win election to the senate. Lula’s efforts came after four years of destruction under Jair Bolsonaro, who governed from 2019 to 2022, and set about dismantling Brazil’s environmental protection agency, Ibama, and other efforts to protect the environment.
Back then, environmental officials were effectively banned from talking to journalists like me. They were grim times for the environment.When I spoke to Marina Silva on Sunday night she was overjoyed that Lula’s efforts to protect the environment could continue now he had secured a second term.
“My heart is happy and filled with gratitude to God and the Brazilian people,” she told me. “The thing I most feared was that our Indigenous territories would be invaded again [under another Bolsonaro government]. Now, I am certain that they will be preserved and that there is no risk of illegal miners returning to destroy these populations.”
Continue reading...