Deeply unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected. Lula was allowed to do every "electoral crime" they barred Bolsonaro from doing in 2022. They even extended voting time, a move that directly benefiting him, and also ruled illegal back in 2022.
Gotta look on the bright side. Bolsonaro was closer to US interests than I'd like. If the elected right wing senate manages to at least impeach some supreme court justices next year, I'm going to be OK with this.
Both sides asked to extend the hours. The court took the action. I don't really know brazillian politics and what happened in the past but thought I'd point that out.
Abstainees were thought to be the biggest source of new votes for Lula in the 2nd round of elections. I think such a move benefited Lula far more than it did Flávio.
It's also inconsistent with the court's own precedent. Extending voting hours was deemed illegal back in 2022. "Everybody had the chance to vote", said Alexandre de Moraes.
After Lula lost in the 1st round, suddenly it became legal again. The irony is not lost on me. That's the pattern with the leftist judges in the courts. The supreme court judge who decided it used to be Lula's own lawyer.
Bolsonaro's father asked for an extension last election. Don't remember why. Denied, illegal. "Everybody had the opportunity to vote".
Bolsonaro's son asked for an extension this election due to heavy rains in the south. As far as I can tell, it was also denied.
Lula asks for an extension this election due to busses being grounded because Lula-aligned syndicates slapped Lula insignias on them which is an electoral crime. Lula's former lawyer turned supreme court judge approves it.
It is obvious that the Brazilian institutions, and these judges in particular, wanted Lula to win. They were going to be impeached otherwise.
The issue is that the extensions were approved selectively, in specific areas expected to favor Lula and not in other areas (e.g. the ones where bolsonaro wanted an extension). It's a gross misrepresentation to suggest that they both wanted an extension so everything is hunky dori.
I for one flag everything I see him posting because his extreme positions hurts our country. It is crazy HN doesn't rate-limit how much he can post and people posting technical stuff can post like 4 comments then get blocked.
Many cities had their mayor cancelling free public transportation and stopping people from going voting. Extending the time is a reaction, not a first action. Furthermore, the ask didn't come just from Lula's party, it came from both candidates [1].
2022 Brazil had the Federal Police Director actively interfering with transportation as well.
This is a very confusing comment. Most on this side don't know the insider informing the Brazilian elections, and we only know the public news
Can you explain?
You are right winger but don't like the Brazilian right wing aligning with the US right wing, but do like the politicians who are aligned with the US right wing?
I'm kinda trying to move past left/right labels. I'll try to explain.
Bolsonaro generally supports privatizing Brazilian state companies and selling them off to foreigners. I don't want that. Especially not to the US and Israel.
Lula on the other hand is better aligned with China, which is also what I want.
Lula and myself are aligned on these two points. So this outcome is not entirely bad for me.
The problem I have with Lula is his party's obnoxious taxation, lack of a real plan for reindustrialization, continuous defense of criminals, and most importantly, his total domination of the supreme court. I voted for the right specifically to see those judges impeached and imprisoned, because I absolutely oppose everything they did in 2022. I'm of the opinion that presidents and elections barely matter anymore, because it's the supreme court that runs the country. It's the Venezuela governance model: president appoints god-like supreme court judges and rules monocratically through them.
The 1st round this month was such an upset not because of Bolsonaro but because of the senate. They are the ones who can impeach supreme court judges, and it struck true fear into the court. Brazilian senate is absolute majority right wing now, and they could still impeach those judges. I'm not going to hold out hope for that anymore, but if I see at least one judge bite the dust I'll still call it a major win.
I have been here for over ten years and have posted over eleven thousand HN comments, only a fraction of which are about politics. If you think I'm some kind of Russian bot account, you couldn't possibly be more wrong.
Also, "debunked" is debatable. I don't accept your portrayal of extremely complex issues as settled, and I also don't accept "official" explanations of anything. I always try to reach my own conclusions and form my own opinions.
I came here to discuss my viewpoints in an attempt to find truth for myself. If you don't want to help with that, then kindly don't reply to me again.
Since this site is unfortunately leftist, you'll be downvoted. I'm not sure how many people know that Lula and Rousseff are Marxist terrorist guerrillas who planted bombs, fly the hammer and sickle, and are openly supported by the Brazilian Communist Party.
It was extremely amusing. The juedge who made the emergency ruling to pause counting and extend voting hours by 2 hours was Cristiano Zanin Martins - Lula's former personal attorney. The same guy who Lula nominated to the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil in June 2023.
Just shows that Democracy is dying all over the world.
Yeah it’s alarming how much HN users are willing to support corruption so long as it’s their preferred candidate doing it. Really is all just tribalism to most posters in this thread so far
Back in 2022, Lula's party used to be against Bolsonaro's "digital militias". They engaged everybody they had in the superior and supreme courts in order to censor it all. It was disgusting.
This time around, some guy in Lula's party created "Lula's Army", a channel with millions of people in it. Suddenly, it was fine.
They used to cry about "fake news" and call for censorship at every opportunity, and they'd get it because they own the courts. Now they were the ones spreading "fake news" of all sorts. Did they get censored? Nah.
Censorship in Brazil is unconstitutional, by the way. Political censorship is doubly so. It doesn't matter, because they own the supreme court.
It sounds like they have tried a tactic, discovered that it does not work, and switched to a different tactic which works. Isn't that exactly what they should do?
Absolutely. Do you have nothing to say about the obvious censorship, though? Consistency demands that they too be censored, since Bolsonaro was censored back in 2022.
You're right about Brazil's censorship problem. There's actually another article about how Lula is still trying to use courts to rein Flavio Bolsonaro's social media presence, with evidence like "the random number generator gave Bolsonaro's ballot number" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229587)
Although fortunately, it didn't seem to be work: it seems Facebook and Twitter largely ignored Brazil's courts and Flavio Bolsonaro had a bigger social media presence despite "Lula's Army".
What's sad is you're down voted for your political opinion, causing HN to classify your comments as low quality, which reduces the amount you can contribute. The Lula supporters and anti-Musk people are exhibiting authoritarian behaviors, and they are too blind to see it. I stick to X for rewarding conversations.
Yeah, I agree completely. I didn't vote for any of these candidates, I voted to impeach the supreme court.
There is exactly one politician that once upon a time represented me: Dr. Enéas Carneiro. Ironically, his ideas were closest to the Chinese Communist Party. He's dead now.
The left wing has PCO, a real left wing party, and I agree with them on a daily basis. They're shunned by everyone, and were even persecuted by the supreme court along with the right wing.
I'm increasingly resigned to the idea that immigration is the only option by now.
Polymarket was like 80% Bolsonaro Jr to 20% Lula 7pm, 7:15 it changed to 60% Lula. There were multiple reports in the news websites about it favoring Bolsonaro which itself probably made some people vote for him.
I'm quite happy with the result tho. Let's see how the far right opposition will take this loss. I'm already expecting the worse.
A 20% chance of Lula winning is still a real chance of winning. A standard rule of thumb would require 2 standard deviations aka 5% aka p<0.05 for relative certainty.
If the new right wing senate manages to at least impeach some supreme court judges, I'll still call it a major win.
Surprising to see Bolsonaro lose at this point, but the real upset of this election was caused by the senate. The whole point of electing the right wing was to impeach the judges. So long as that happens, I will be satisfied.
The next four years were going to seriously suck for Flávio. Now the economic bomb is going to explode in Lula's hands. I was tempted to vote for Lula myself just to make that happen. It's the supreme court issue that stopped me.
It's the only place where I feel safe enough to discuss Brazilian politics.
Impeachment of the supreme court is precisely what will save this country. They have been ruling monocratically since they launched the "fake news" inquisition in 2019. People can stomach a Lula win, even I have points where I intersect with the guy. The thing is not a single Brazilian voted for those judges.
> It's the only place where I feel safe enough to discuss Brazilian politics
And so, you feel comfortable foisting your political views on a tech forum, even when you are repeatedly told that your views are unhinged and that you need serious help?
Depends on which ranked system. IRV has a lot of issues that other systems (like STAR, my personal preference in voting system, or Condorcet methods for instance) address much better. Non-monotonicity in particular seems like a bad property of a voting system, so I'm confused that IRV is so popular recently.
> Non-monotonicity in particular seems like a bad property of a voting system, so I'm confused that IRV is so popular recently.
Same here. The idea of lobbying for a voting system where your vote for a candidate might hurt them, or where you might be better off not voting at all than expressing your honest preference is bizarre to me. If IRV was the only alternative, sure, but we have multiple other systems which don't have as bad tradeoffs. STAR or Ranked Robin would be so much better, but the Equal Vote Coalition doesn't seem to have the power behind it that FairVote does.
One reason IRV is popular is that it has extensive use in other countries (Australia, Ireland). It's not revolutionary but it's an improvement and nothing terrible has happened.
STAR has been used approximately nowhere. STAR is also one of the few seriously advocated-for voting methods in which it's possible for the first choice of a majority to lose, although that isn't likely to happen in practice.
IRV is not used in Ireland except for president, a role so procedurally minor that there is an alternative used when the president is unavailable (it seems to have evolved into what could be called an artistic role). Almost all elections are multimember (3-5 member districts); the voting is done the same way but most of the issues with IRV don't apply to the multimember version or are much less severe. In Ireland, the proprotionally elected body decides the single person roles, including things like auditor or mayor.
No electoral method is perfect and there are problems with Instant runoff ranked ballots. Look up "Favourite Betrayal" as a problem where ranking your most favourite incorrectly can accidentally result in your least favourite winning.
Of course just because there are technically flaws, doesn't mean it's not an improvement over the status quo.
Instant Runoff Ranked ballots are particularly well suited for electing a single position like a Mayor or President. Given that it's still a majoritarian system like First Pass the Post, it's a much more questionable system to use for other things like electing a parliament.
I think IRV at least has fairly unpredictable failure cases, which means they can't be exploited.
I remember seeing a 2D chart representing voter preferences on the X and Y axis, coloured by who wins under those preferences (and some assumptions). Some systems showed clear biases towards certain outcomes. IRV had a pretty symmetric shape but with a random mess of different colours in the middle.
Approval voting has all the upsides and none of the downsides, with the added bonus that it's simple to count and easy to explain to the average person.
> Of course just because there are technically flaws, doesn't mean it's not an improvement over the status quo.
The problem IMO is when there's better options but it's hard to get people to care enough to switch systems again. I'm hoping Ranked Robin can catch on so at least places that went to IRV can switch to a better system without new ballots.
STAR Voting (Score Then Automatic Runoff) works in two stages:
1. Voters score candidates from 0 to 5.
2. The two candidates with the highest total scores become finalists.
3. The finalist preferred by more voters wins.
So it combines score voting and runoff. Meaning it favors centrist candidates that are prefered by most people over somebody that can turn out the base.
Not Brazillian, and I didn't know about the 2-turn system, but I definitely became a fan. It's simple to understand and to implement. Ranked voting is too complex to implement and for everyone to understand. Run-off lets you vote for you preferred party first, and for the realistic contender second. Sadly, almost no one did that in Brazil - >90% voted for the finalists in the first turn.
I really strongly believe in approval/disapproval with a runoff.
You can vote for or against as many candidates as you want. Take the top 2 score getters and do a runoff. This means in the first round you can have as many candidates as you want. Those with no name recognition get no support. Also it prevents the situation so many find themselves in where both candidates are deeply unpopular but we feel we have no other choices. If the most well known candidates are deeply divisive then they won't get through.
The runoff gives people time to research the 2 candidates.
two-turn systems don't help if the people aren't educated about them. I lost a friendship once over trying to argue with them that it's okay for people to vote on unpopular candidates in the 1st turn.
Once again, a clear anti-Bolsonaro vote from the majority of the electorate. Lula won because he got last-minute support from the moderates and even some right-wingers. It certainly does not feel like a victory of the left.
Now he will face a much bigger opposition in Congress and therefore will have to find a middle ground.
I expect his policies to move even further to the right. This might pave the way for his vice-president Alckmin, a historical right-winger, to run in the 2030 elections — likely against São Paulo’s governor Tarcísio de Freitas, also a right-winger and considered more moderate than the Bolsonaros despite being associated with them.
moving to the right would be a trap. (cf. Dem party vs Trump) The left must instead build an anti-right wing narrative. People vote on material benefits so delivering more of those should be top priority—I think Trumps slump in the US proves that.
Nobody wants to see them cut taxes from the rich or reduce employers rights. The popular "right" in Brazil wants taxes to be easier to pay, judges not to decide based on who is asking, and clear rules on what you can or can't do.
Also, nobody can beat Dilma on cutting taxes from the rich.
But there's also a religious fundamentalist faction, no? Which I recently learned was fomented by the CIA years ago under Reagan (when the Catholic church was moving left and the "US" was afraid of Brazil moving to the left as well)
Those, the "we must kill all the criminals!!", the actual nazis and all the other people that identify with the Bolsonaro family add up to about 15% of the country.
No it doesn't. And you citing a government debt stat doesn't prove it. As a counter-example, the UK set up the NHS in 1948 when their public debt was over 200% of GDP.
No, I'm saying UK already had to compromise, and Brazil doesn't have the same economic advantages as the UK did. In all, while I haven't stated it's 100% impossible, I haven't stated it's possible, even less so preferable.
i don't know why you were downvoted. any turn to the moderation/center seems good news to me. those crazy swings between extremes left or right are just bad. i have never voted for both bolsonaro neither lula and crave for something closer to the center.
lula is a little less crazy (compared to bolsonaro), likely not anti-science, preserves the amazon, seems to care about keeping the same constituition and so on, but he heaves his hand when it comes to (mostly populist) spending, like there's no tomorrow.
he thinks he is helping the poor, but it is just for short term. so much public debt, in a few years everyone, rich or poor, will have pay the price, with interest. people that likes him usually say they don't like milei, but his incredible debt build up is actually a future-milei magnet.
also, after so much terms and "custo brazil" ("Brazilian (Business) Cost Burden"?) still prohibitive, the country never goes up from its terrible positions in making business rankings. one can just not hope he does anything better now after so much terms. his spending is too demand biased.
> he heaves his hand when it comes to (mostly populist) spending, like there's no tomorrow
This is key to his reelection. He literally ran on a "Bolsonaro will end Bolsa Família" campaign.
It's unfortunate. Lula inherited a post-Washington consensus neoliberal Brazil. He had nearly 20 years to undo all that and reindustrialize the country, thereby putting us on China's path.
I would have voted for him regardless of ideology if he had done it, but he didn't. It's just easier to just anesthetize the population and put them on paliative care with free money.
> he thinks he is helping the poor, but it is just for short term.
This "short term" is unbearably long... But I do see signs that the system is reaching its limits. Government was already having trouble paying pensions before Vorcaro.
> so much public debt, in a few years everyone, rich or poor, will have pay the price, with interest.
Big issue is that there are no swings between crazy left and crazy right.
There is crazy right and significantly more normal left. And if you want the center to win, you need to ackwnowledge that. Anything else helps the more crazy side.
The one good thing about the current system is that shitheads like musk can spend half-a-billion to buy elections, but the people still have the final say.
No, this much money in politics is still very dangerous.
A major reason it isn't working for now is because Donald Trump is, in addition to being a corrupt autocrat, incredibly incompetent. We shouldn't have to rely on that.
It's amazing how people keep forgetting that when they use a certain behavior, or justify a certain action, they give the same privilege to their opponent. Thus you are the shithead.
Interestingly the current "lets stop corporations from spending money on elections" that's popular in several states - wouldn't directly touch Musk because he can just spend the money directly.
I don't think "Oooh. Scary muslims!" works any less well if it's required to say "Elon Musk" rather than "American Apple Pie Goodness PAC" or whatever.
It might make a difference for smaller donors, especially if they're more sensitive about their personal PR.
Many countries cap donations by private individuals (capped to 1,000 in Ireland, for instance, for both private individuals and companies). Like, this is a fixable problem.
It's fixable if you have significant Supreme Court reform. I doubt the numbers are there to actually land that reform. Say you get 52 Democrats in the Senate, which is a tall order, and you write some reforms that could actually work, forced retirements, that sort of thing, immediately you'll find that two or three of them suddenly think such reforms need to be "bipartisan" and alas the Republicans who've fixed things don't seem interested in coming along. How about that.
Or, I suppose, you could fix it by abolishing America's Written Constitution so that its legislature can just write legislation for this. I think that would go down like cold sick - Americans love their Written Constitution.
They are impressive but I often ask myself why so much effort is spend here. While people are curious about results, a bit of waiting for the counts shouldn't matter.
The most "sensible" application would be for betting markets I thought.
One modern need is to avoid people using the well known patterns of vote reporting to inflame conspiracies about "mysterious" and "sudden" reversals in vote tallies.
The Finnish public broadcaster has used a model to predict final vote share for as long as I remember. The stated purpose is to offset the bias that comes from smaller, more rural municipalities reporting sooner.
It usually kicks in when 10-20 % of the votes have been counted and switches back to raw results near the 90% mark.
Didn't find an exact date when they started using it; an article says "dates back to 1960s" but it's definitely been a staple in 2000s.
Mexico has been doing that since the 90s, with the PREP (Programa de Resultados Electorales Preliminares). Preliminary results start pouring almost soon as the voting period ends, and in 24 hours we know the winner. Statistical models are perfect for this scenario, as they become increasingly certain. In my country, the loser has conceded defeat before all 100% votes are counted, by sheer mathematical certainty.
It always surprises me that USA, the self-appointed bastion of democracy worldwide, has such tortuous and malleable elections; and that no serious academic discussion occurs despite the endemic flaws. Even these days, the PREP's Wikipedia page lacks an English translation.
In a liberal democracy with many opposing viewpoints, having to elect a single "head of government" that will be necessarily beholden to only one part of the electorate is detrimental, especially in combination with something like FPTP.
A directorate where executive power is distributed over multiple people and executive policy is decided on in a concordat it a much better solution.
Yes it sounds worrisome, the general populace is getting fed up with him running the country for 20 years and want a fresh change of leaders.
But it doesn't help that the alternative far-right candidate is an extremist nutjob whose appointment for the presidential race was done for noone other than nepotism (bearing his jailed father name). That alienated alot of his voting base who wanted a more competent candidate.
Not really. He has never had any real legislative power to back him. The biggest scandal surrounding his party was paying off congressmen and heads of parties in order for them to vote for welfare policies. These policies never would've been voted in if that was not the case. A lot of parties gatekeep votes for important legislation until they get handouts.
Ironically (or not at all) the man who individually received the most money from that scheme is the head of Flavio Bolsonaro's party, and the party who received the most payoff as a whole was Jair Bolsonaro's party at the time.
Politics in Brazil require a great deal of consensus, obscure dealmaking and corruption.
I have a learning a bit more related to tech from this election. Centrally organized, cohesive, persistent online engagement wins elections.
It won for Bolsonaro whose campaign nailed it in 2018. It didn’t win in 2022 because he was completely bad in dealing with pandemics (mocking people dying and saying he had nothing to do with it being president).
Now, Lula’s campaign was absolutely dead during the whole time. Until it lost in the legislative by a mile and in the President run had a partial loss in the first round. Then the campaign lit up after the partial upset.
Janones, an energetic young guy elected to legislative with good online presence led the campaign. He achieved creating a WhatsApp group with 11 million people called “Lula’s army”. He would give the directions and the people would obey almost blindly.
The interwebs (basically WhatsApp + Instagram) got flooded with this top to bottom Lula’s campaign.
The first round results made Bolsonaro very favorite. Lula victory was a huge upset. I put the merit in this incessant social media campaign.
The thing is: “centrally planned cohesive campaign” looks a lot like a cult. The point of the campaign is not critical thought or argumentation, it is incessant messaging. Think fandoms.
Bolsonaro voters pejorative nickname from past campaigns was they were all “cattle”. Because that is how they behaved online. Ironically, what worked for Lula voters this year was they behaving like “cattle”. Just reposting and following this central orders on what to post, what to say, what to dress.
The thing is, it works. Cult-like fandoms work in elections. The right won a few elections like this in the world. In Brazil, the left just learned how to do it was well.
The more mindless posters a politician has following their campaign HQ orders, the more votes they have.
> It didn’t win in 2022 because he was completely bad in dealing with pandemics
And also because the entire state apparatus was engaged in unconstitutional censorship of his "centrally organized, cohesive, persistent online engagement" machine, which is what wins elections, as you noted.
And now that Janones set up his own "Lula's Army", Brazilian institutions did not manifest even a fraction of the energy they had shown while persecuting Bolsonaro.
Lula was allowed to do everything Bolsonaro was persecuted for in 2022. He even lowered taxes on fuels, and got away with it. The tax cut ends tomorrow.
Nonsense, Bolsonaro was persecuted because 100,000's of Brazilians died unnecessarily during the pandemic, and he and his family decided to push hidrocloroquina and experiment with "forced herd immunity" in regions like Manaus that were sacrificed instead of just telling people to mask, isolate, and take the vaccine. The department of hate from 2018-2022 was absolutely a fake news factory on the model of Steve Bannon and friends, nothing like the Janones digital movement which was completely transparent: you just had to join (and can still join) the whatsapp group.
His poor handling of the pandemic does not somehow justify the relentless censorship effort in 2022.
I remind you that censorship is unconstitutional in Brazil, and political censorship doubly so. The supreme court walked all over the constitution when they censored him.
"Fake news" is still speech and cannot and must not be censored. I question the supreme court's ability to determine whether any political statement is true or false in an impartial manner: they declared fake things which I know are true. They said it was "fake news" that Lula was a friend of communist dictators. After he won, I was forced to watch him literally roll out the red carpet and welcome Maduro to my country with full military honors. It was a nationwide gaslighting campaign.
Your side also pushed plenty of "fake news", only with total impunity. Claimed he was going to end the healthcare system. Claimed he was going to end government benefits. Claimed he was going to abolish female suffrage. Bolsonaro has repeatedly said he was never going to do any of that, yet the pushing persisted, and not a single judge lifted a finger to censor you people.
Must be nice, having literal judge-god-kings on your side.
You only need to look at what FB has said and done over his entire career in public and private, his copycatting of Trump (ahem, the first debate), and the conduct of him and his father's government (stealing funds allocated for social programs for a shadow budget) to know that his government, with executive, legislative, and judicial majorities, would wreak havoc on every Brazilian instution possible, ala Trump's second government.
As is currently observable in the United States, given consolidation of power in the three branches of government, it is no longer necessary to follow the law or the constitution. Minimal research into who from the US government the Bolsonaros associate with tells you what their agenda would have been in the "Bolsonaro 2" government: complete, transparent self-interest and complete disregard for actually administering the country for the benefit of the people.
Taking him at his word in the last three months of the campaign after 20 years of a vapid/nothing political career full of police investigations and associations with organized crime makes no sense.
Janones was not leading a cult at all, this is just absurd. He was not telling people what to believe or how to behave AT ALL - he was just giving directions on what to do on social media to win the elections. Bolsonarism on the other hand is 100% a cult, from the beginning.
In India, we have a name for for blind supporters of the current Hindu right ruling party.. The BJP... They're called andh bhakts... Translated 'the faithful blind'... Even incontrovertible proof of wrong doing does not change their mindset
Lula's corruption "scandal" was the Lava Jato which was cooked up by Bolsonaro. He served 580 days in jail for it. Even the United Nations stepped in and said the case violated his due process and political rights
What other cases are you referring to? Be specific
Bolsonaro made a deal with the judge Sérgio Moro which is what got Lula unable to run against Bolsonaro. He then appointed Moro as his Minister of Justice and Public Security as a political reward.
Investigative journalists from The Intercept proved this collaboration when they got ahold of leaked Telegram messages. That investigation is what led the Supreme Court to throw out the conviction and the United Nations to step in and call it out as bogus.
I see. That's absolutely problematic and I don't condone it.
Are we really just going to ignore all the other evidence though? All the testimonies? The corruption can't possibly have been fake. It's scandal after scandal, Vorcaro is just the latest episode.
Note that I'm not denying that the Bolsonaros are corrupt. I think every single politician in this country is corrupt.
I'm not denying there's not a corruption issue. Even the US has a massive corruption issue. But what does Vorcaro have to do with Lula? "Operation Compliance Zero", which is what led to Vorcaro's arrest, was launched under Lula.
Doesn't that, if anything, support the idea that Lula is fighting corruption?
Bolsonaro tried to claim that Vorcaro made a payment to the Lula Institute but the police and even Vorcaro himself denied this ever happened. Lula is also the one pushing the Supreme Court to disclose everything about the case to the public
It's wild to me how much of the public associates thoroughly disproven corruption issues with Lula. Especially when the Bolsonaros has much more clear and direct evidence of corruption (e.g. the financing of the Dark Horse movie). The social media campaigns have clearly been very effective and the actual investigative journalism is being drowned out
At this point though, Lula's corruption or lack thereof is completely irrelevant. It's Vorcaro's connection to supreme court judges that are most important. How can we possibly try anyone whatsoever for corruption when the judiciary itself is tainted?
You just made a persuasive argument that Lula's corruption case had to be thrown out because of a partial judge. I accepted your argument and updated my world view.
I am now completely convinced that it is the judiciary that is the problem. It makes no sense anymore for us to even so much as speculate about the corruption of any politician until the judiciary is fixed.
If the supreme court isn't fixed, there is no doubt in my mind that it will turn into a stalinistic "find me the man and I'll find you the crime" situation. The supreme court is completely aligned with Lula right now, so I'm sure the left is going to love it. Remember, however, that the left used to call Alexandre de Moraes an extreme right wing fascist, racist and genocider when he was nothing but a justice secretary in São Paulo.
> Even incontrovertible proof of wrong doing does not change their mindset
You could argue that about pretty much every politician and their supporters in India. The right wing keeps winning because the left refuses to address the fears of a majority of the Indian population. Even if those fears are unwarranted - dismissing them as "uneducated" and "blind sheep" alienates people even more.
Most of that gear is manufactured.. With mass media fully captured.. So yes, unwarranted.. And the people are coming out of the spell.. Esp as they see their children suffer due to the systemic damage... These are the silent majority that's slow to react but eventually does.. That's what put the fear in the govt now and precipitated the massive crackdown on dissent.
When one doesn’t have a response based on logic and common sense, one resorts to name calling.
Fact is, whether you like it or not, the party in power has been in power only for a few years, and has achieved more than the other party did in 60 years.
Do you really believe that the INC would have handled Covid better? They were trying to kill off indigenous vaccines to favour Pfizer etc who (a) refused trials in Indian conditions and (b) wanted $62 per shot.
Do you really believe that they would have managed to keep fuel prices in check given Trump's war on Iran?
Do you really believe that Rahul Gandhi is qualified to run a home owner's association, leave alone a nation of 1.4 billion people?
Take a look in the mirror then next time you use that phrase.
Just a friendly gesture that there's still independents/non-partisan's here. We're a dying breed, but it seems to the the inevitable outcome when politics becomes a religion.
Well some of them. You can always use another word for those. Socialist tends to get used. It's kind of funny how politics corrupts all terms from their original meaning.
The "left" ignores the vast amount of statistical evidence that differences in outcomes among ethnicities are due to differences in mean IQ scores, and instead assumes there's some big societal conspiracy to suppress black and Hispanic people, and privilege Whites, East Asians, Jews and Indians.
the Overton Window in the US is so far to the right that it's not even on the wall any more. It's just hanging in space, off somewhere outside the whole building (aka physical reality).
The mental gymnastics on display here by so many is quite impressive. Many are now saying term limits are bad. They want the government to control media outlets. They take on face value vague accusations against META doing something wrong.
Yeah this is valuable context. He Jerry Brown'd it.
I do think term limits are good, but nonconsecutive 16 years is actually an ok limit IMHO. Maybe not the one I'd prefer for my government, but not necessarily objectively bad for democracy.
I don't like the idea of reelections in general. I think it is generally damaging to democracy. Ideally I would not even add term limits, but they should all be non-consecutive.
Still, as you said, this context is important. Lula left in 2010 and came back in 2022 after having been arrested, freed, and then defeating Jair Bolsonaro, who was the current president and a fierce rival.
That said, I think reelections are actually more damaging in the legislative (and it is not uncommon to have congressmen and senators for 20, 30 years straight).
It's very situationally dependent. Term limits stop bad politicians doing too much damage, they also stop good politicians getting too much momentum on their side.
Why? If they’re democratically voted, what’s wrong with it?
Australia has no term limits and has famously had the longest serving prime minister (12 years) followed by extremely short terms. All seemed to represent the general will of the population.
I wish Australia had term limits for all politicians, and not just for the PM. Term limits prevents people becoming career politicians, which i think would be a good thing.
The argument against aggressive term limits that I’ve read: there are many people making a career in politics as a whole—lobbyists, influence groups, party committees, etc. They have a huge advantage over the term-limited elected politician.
I’m not a political junkie but that makes sense to me. The critters who get your vote are just part of the system that runs the place.
Mark Rutte, Netherlands, 14 years prime minister, four terms in office. It is hard to say if he represented the general will of the population given that his party, the liberal-right VVD favors the more well-to-do part of the population. I think many voters voted for him as a trustworthy face and friendly, amicable man. Vote for the personality. He was also characterized as Mr Tefal for his ability to make nothing stick to him in terms of criticism, and utterly pragmatic, denouncing vision. As a result the big problems and areas where reform were most needed, were always pushed to the future.
You might say he introduced a kind of populism, where politicians only care about the next election round and their reputation, to the cost of important decision-making and long-term thinking. Unfortunately this is kind of a working strategy, a weakness of democracy, where the current centre-right government is struggling with all the aggravated problems not dealt with in the past, and the voters think "well, perhaps we have to vote VVD again where these problems didn't exist", or vote more right-wing by populism that makes immigration the cause of all problems.
I think the real weakness of democracy is that governments can’t make difficult changes. The current government wanted to but both the right and the left did not accept those changes. Similar story as France, a big need to change, but everybody expects others to pay, not themselves.
Today, it’s always either the fault of the other party (who never had a real chance of making big changes), the rich (but if you tax them too much they leave and you’re left with no economy, see France), or the foreigners.
The idea that you must fire your most competent employees after ~8 years on the job, in a exceedingly difficult job that requires on-the-job training, is in fact one of the most inane and damaging things to democracy.
Disagree. Presidency, like other elected positions, should not be a career. I want people who can serve with high dedication and then go back to private life. I'd like to see term limits on representatives and senators as well, and also an upper age limit.
> Presidency, like other elected positions, should not be a career.
As stated, this is merely a truism, and you have not justified this belief. Would you care to? It seems very irrational to me. High office is one of the most difficult and most impactful jobs in the world. It's easy to do a terrible job and screw everyone over while enriching yourself, of course, but extremely challenging to do a good job. You are responsible for the fate of tens or hundreds of millions of people, and must exercise incredible judgment on the breadth of every macro problem society faces while simultaneously maneuvering both internal support and foreign relations. Why would we not want to make this most important of all jobs a job where people can actually grow into the role and demonstrate expertise in it? You are strictly only eliminating the electorate's options. There is already a corrective mechanism for voters to evict someone doing a bad job [whether they choose to exercise it is another matter, but that's literally democracy in action], but there should be no mechanism to sustain a job well done?
The skill to win elections and the skill to govern are not the same. And humans have biases against change. Term limits guarantee the downside is limited and they are healthy for a real democracy.
Also... too long in power makes it easier to dismantle the democratic process.
The entire American system of checks and balances is not designed to get optimal leadership, it is designed to limit damage from bad leadership.
> The skill to win elections and the skill to govern are not the same.
Then elect someone else next time. This, however, is a criticism of democracy more than it is a justification for term limits.
> The entire American system of checks and balances is not designed to get optimal leadership, it is designed to limit damage from bad leadership.
How's that working out for you? You got Trump and Biden as a direct result of term limits. The way I see it, your system has selected for the maximally damaging bad leadership possible.
Can't much see a difference between Trump and Putin what with him baselessly invading Iran, Venezeula, the corruption, and wiping his ass with your constitution with his declared intent to defy the term limits anyways (something that is liable to happen when you rotate bad people into office instead of keeping good people - they actually just don't care about what limits you wrote on paper, meaning your restrictions only apply to your good employees).
> You got Trump and Biden as a direct result of term limits.
The US only enacted term limits in 1951. Before that time, only two presidents had attempted to seek third terms (another two attempted but failed to secure even a nomination by a political party), and only one was successful.
And, quite frankly, the only president since the 22nd amendment who I could see wanting to run for a third term is Trump, who does seem to be campaigning for one anyways despite being constitutionally barred from it.
The writing is that no one can serve as president for longer than ten years, not that someone couldn't run a third term. A traditional reading means that you wouldn't seek a third term, but tradition'a been thrown out the window.
In the interests of pedantry, that's not what the writing says. The operative text is quoted here:
> No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
The 'obvious loophole' is that the text doesn't constrain the number of terms anyone can serve, but instead constrains the number of times someone can be elected as president, so if you run as vice president for someone who agrees to immediately resign to let you be president, you technically don't run afoul of the rule.
(The more likely loophole, following from Trump v Colorado, is that nobody is actually allowed to declare somebody ineligible for president, so the constitution's strictures are meaningless in practice. It truly is a disgusting SCOTUS decision.)
I mean, US foreign policy been supercharged with Trump, and from that perspective his leadership's been plenty adequate. Declaring war on Iran in particular has long been a neoliberal aspiration that no one had the political courage to implement - enter Trump, the nominal adversary on whom they could outsource their ambitions, and whose blunders could cynically be disavowed.
I agree with you, the system is far from perfect. But right now we're talking about the benefits of term limits and it is greatly comforting that no matter what, in two more years Trump will be gone.
Disc: not an American. But it seems to me that Trump won't have a 3rd term, and he is not working actively achieving that. In other countries someone like Trump would be using his power to get elected for a 3rd term. How it has happened in Russia, China, Turkey etc. The reason he isn't doing it is that it is not a realistic option.
Seems like limiting the number of terms is probably one of the best and most useful part of the US political system.
They are most competent in getting elected, which often is not the same as being most competent in anything else.
Even with Germany it turned out that Angela Merkel did grave mistakes and Germans were able to find out about those only after she left office. Being continually in office gives you the ability to hide your trials.
> They are most competent in getting elected, which often is not the same as being most competent in anything else.
If it was not clear, I am not stating that anyone who is in office is automatically the most competent. However, the entire point of a democracy is that you have the option to fire bad candidates. And yet, with term limits, when you do get a competent candidate in office, you do not have the option to keep them in office.
The most commonly repeated pattern across literally all of human history is that power grows.
Being the chief executive in a system like brazil's results in a lot of power, for several perfectly good reasons, but it does mean you have to build in safe guards against that power growing.
Regular elections are good, but not sufficient, as a study of recent world history would demonstrate.
> Regular elections are good, but not sufficient, as a study of recent world history would demonstrate.
Term limits are not a solution either, as a study of recent world history would demonstrate. Clearly there is a need to check power, but perhaps the mechanisms that check power should not also ensure you will never have a truly excellent leader && increase instability from flipflopping policies && give more opportunities for people who will abuse power to take office and ignore the term limits because that's what people who abuse power do. A term limit is only effective against a mildly bad candidate who is not truly willing to abuse their power, because if they are willing to abuse their power they can just ignore it. In that way, you've created a system that caps upside but leaves downside uncapped in practice.
Democracies shouldn't have a "leader", they should have functional governments and strong oppositions. Focusing on a single person never ends well (see the US, China and Russia).
I wouldn't mix countries and software projects though. When the "benevolent leader" of a software project goes crazy there will be a bit of social media drama and that's it. When the same thing happens in a country, people are massacred (and in essence this is also the reason why countries shouldn't be governed like a company, a country can't simply shut down like a company when things go south).
There's the view that republican Rome's military success was due to their public career path churning out OK military commanders at a steady rate. Not necessarily great, just good enough with a solid understanding of the basics.
The fall of that system then came about when politically ambitious characters started developing more personal and long-term relations with their troops.
I'd say that's an argument for term limits: you want them to get good but not set roots permanently.
I ran into that idea the other day and I thought it was pretty interesting, although I'd phrase it slightly differently:
"Rome's tradition of having to serve in 'lower offices' before the higher ones meant that when aristocrats inevitably ended up in charge of entire armies they had some level of practical experience and learnings to draw on while commanding".
But yes, much is made of Rome's redundancy in terms of military strength and there's a lot of states during that period that had A King who did everything and then died in a battle and then everything collapsed.
Tbh, a single politician should never have enough power to move the needle significantly to either side. And even in companies, the "bus factor" is a thing (eg everybody must be replaceable).
It's even more important that time limit gives those in power a planned off-ramp.
The extreme case which you want to avoid is "politicians" (dictators) desperately clinging to power, because they did things that would get them killed if they ever lost their power, which is a vicious cycle.
TBH the idea that one person could have so much power is bad imho, it only attracts sociopaths.
I like the swiss model more where one party never gets full power, even if it means societal changes take more time to happen[1], it seems less risky to me as there is never one power grab whose decision can influence the next election by stuff like redistricting, puting clearly leaning judges to federal court, etc.
[1] famous example is the women right to vote in the general election happened in 1971 which is quite shameful
When I read about ancient (republican) Rome, I used to wonder how much their having an off-ramp from power contributed to their stability.
In many of the contemporary cultures (e.g., the post-Alexander greek kingdoms), being toppled from the heights of power would result in exile, imprisonment, or worse; in the republic, you could lose a battle as a general or step down from being consul and still lead a peaceful life afterwards.
One could argue that the change in this situation in the late republic directly resulted in it's downfall--Caesar crossed the Rubicon because he feared prosecution and imprisonment by his opponents once he lost his proconsular immunity.
That's a reasonable thought. But a counter perspective is that leaders may have had more integrity and fidelity to ethical behaviors making prosecution less necessary. If that were the case then it would be better to have continual investigation and prosecution possible so there is no shield of power or incentive to hold on to the shield. The check on power is the punishment. The threat of punishment encourages leaders that are unethical to self select avoiding office.
> Even with Germany it turned out that Angela Merkel did grave mistakes and Germans were able to find out about those only after she left office. Being continually in office gives you the ability to hide your trials.
A "required absence" is a thing in a number of sensitive positions, especially financial/regulated industries.
In America the next administration hides them for you because they will never set the precedent of punishing a president for exceeding their power.
Obama could have had Bush against the wall at the Hague for his war crimes... and then Trump could have had Obama against the wall at the Hague for his war crimes... and then Biden could have had Trump... and on and one we go.
It’s a nice argument but there’s another axis: fatigue. Leading takes its toll. To be charitable it’s not plausible that you can run a country, with all the stress that entails, and out compete everyone not at the apex of the front line.
I check my brake pads every year. Eventually the incumbent pads lose out to some whipper-snapper from the new pads box. I might vote red again or I might switch to blue. It depends how muddy it is. Either way, it’s both a new/old choice as well as a red/blue choice.
Time-in-office is also a major contributor to corruption. Lukashenko has been winning the same election for 30+ years!
i feel like democracy isn't about the most competent but about the "least bad" option you could have. an effective dictator (lol) can cut thru the red tape but what people are worried about are the terrible ones. at least with a democracy you can rotate them out.
Except when those employees also have command of armies, at which point history has shown that swapping them out before they get too comfortable is key for keeping a republic a republic.
It doesn't really show that, though. Putin was not stopped by term limits. Hitler seized power within a year of being elected. Lukashenko established his rigged state within two years. Fujimori launched a self-coup within two years. I'm actually not aware of evidence that term limits have ever meaningfully did anything to impede a would-be wrongdoer.
Survivorship bias explains that. The list of dictators-for-life does not include those who don't become dictators for life.
I'd suggest that term limits are party of a package that rests on strong public faith in democratic institutions. E.g. Macron is about able to hang on, but i doubt he could stay past an electoral defeat because he presides over a nation that won't tolerate it.
First among equals, the president of the Confederation has no powers over and above the other six councillors and continues to head the assigned department. Traditionally the duty rotates among the members in order of seniority; the vice president of the Federal Council assumes the presidency the year after the officeholder's tenure. The president of the Confederation is not the head of state because the entire Federal Council is the collective head of state.
No, it means that the role of the Swiss president cannot be compared to the cases discussed. It requires a different organization of the state, not just a term or age limit.
Wrt to the latter: the Swiss system prefers the elder candidate.
The entire republican tradition (with a small r) rests on the assumption that leadership is a common skill. The society is supposed to give ambitious young people opportunities to demonstrate their skills, and then select the most capable ones and give them increasingly challenging roles. At any given time, there should be an order of magnitude more potential leaders (with the necessary skills and experience) than what the society actually needs. And the leaders should be replaced often enough, to avoid giving them the idea that they are somehow special.
It shouldn’t be a fixed age, that’s the mistake too many laws make already is not accounting for change. What happens when i. the future the average lifespan is 200 years? It should be something like no older than 75% of the average lifespan.
Part of being competent is building legislative and other public service systems that run without you being at the helm, and bringing up younger leaders behind you who keep things going upward. Memento mori, and all that.
Exactly this; the job of civil service is to retain institutional competence, and to offer cabinets digests and levers to pull that they can operate at high level.
Day one:
- your predecessor had this and this initiative, see pages 4 to 7
- i don't like that, what alternatives exist
- we worked this up at the time, here are the projections which were updated six months ago
- good, do that instead
- we'll need to redo the numbers
- then do so, and brief me again next week
Democracy is not about figuring out who’s most competent at the job, it’s about being able to get rid of everybody in power at some point without using weapons or waiting for them to die of natural causes. A term limit is a very good idea and I’d even implement it for legislators and other government officials.
Are you talking about politicians, or actual employees?
If the latter: Yes, that is actually stupid, but the stupidity lies not in the term limits for politicians, but in the idea that public servants are employed on the grounds of party affiliation.[1]
But replacing large swathes of competent higher officials every time you change government... The only country I know of for sure that does that is the USA. Are you saying that's the way it works in Brazil, too?
___
[1]: Sure, to some extent it exists everywhere, but that's usually only a few sincure posts for old politicians removed from any actual influence by being "promoted diagonally left-upwards". (See, for example, the post of "landshövding" in Sweden.)
The problem is what happens if an incompetent person stays on forever. There are many examples in history of great countries and empires that were lead by one person only for it all to come down when one idiot became the person in charge. An important idea behind term limits and democracy is sacrificing the ability to have an amazing leader for life so that an incompetent leader doesn't serve for life.
Its a fundamental safeguard and a hedge against tyranny. Its why, in general, countries that are lead by one person for life can be very impressive in the short term but inevitably fall apart once the wrong person eventually takes charge. Because the odds are that eventually the wrong person will take charge.
Brazil also has this. A president can't run 3 times in a row. But if there's a break in between then they can run again. Lula won't be able to run in 2030
I think limiting presidential terms is pretty American, I can't see why its undemocratic to stand for longer as long as there are still elections, free press, right to protest etc.
In the US, FDR stood 4 terms, and he was hardly the end of democracy.
Please, let's not cherry-pick our worries about what's not good for democracy. Yes, perhaps term-limits might aid in a healthy democracy, perhaps not. But please read this [1]
Hear hear! It's very harmful to cherry pick one side, if the other is almost objectivibly terrible.
Because some can have critical conversations, with pros and cons, right and wrong doings. But others will lie, cheat and steal, and degrade democracy, with long term impacts.
It's not. Brazil has a good elections system with the 2 turns. But still on the first turn more than 90% voted for these 2 parties. The only party on "the left" is a Unionist president and a right wing vice president. There's no serious politics on the left, and people vote like they are cheering for football teams. Voting for Lula was the evident lesser evil (as in, proven track record, and no concrete evidence of corruption like his opponent), but half the country disagrees...
It wasn't consecutive, there were 2 terms (one of which was for the opposition) in-between. According to the law a president can only serve 2 consecutive terms.
It is not great true, but it is not Turkey/Russia-level with president for life (yet). Although it is forming a succession crisis in much the same way.
Well when the alternative is someone who is openly in favor of violently overthrowing fair elections it's hard to get too upset about someone winning fairly, even if it is their fourth time.
It's wild how closely Brazil's politics have mirrored the US in recent years, at least at a high level. They literally had their own Jan 6 insurrection. Lula, like Biden, was competent enough for a time but ultimately outstayed his welcome and ran for another term when they should have gracefully retired. Unlike Biden, Lula actually imposed some consequences on the people trying to destroy his country's democracy.
The idea was to have the best of both worlds. Electronic voting plus a paper vote that gets automatically printed and deposited into a sealed box. Fast vote counting, plus the paper votes as the ultimate source of truth.
AFAIK the final numbers are not out yet, the electoral commission called it because Lula's margin is sufficiently large that Bolsonaro mathematically cannot win.
I was seeing the reports from the first pass which said it was almost guaranteed that Lula would not win because of what the results of the first were. I wonder what caused that prediction to fail.
I am glad the son of a failed coup organizer and a trump puppet didn't get elected and am hopeful for Brazils ability to self govern. Breaking free of US financial monopolies (credit cards) gives me hope they'll continue to produce and innovative into a healthier and competitive world market, but I am also tired of Lula being at the helm and wish someone else could step up and take the reigns. When someone stays in power for so long in a democracy it makes me suspicious of the legitimacy of their power. Are they popular because they are good for the country or are they popular because they have the right people with power, influence, and money on their side.
Hell of an allegation to make with no evidence provided. How do "they" "have" the supreme court, and why does that mean that they're popular and win elections?
When "but they let more eligible voters vote, that's cheating!" is your argument against someone in a democracy, it's time to take a good look at yourself.
Have polling stations open for a week, run them 24 hours on election day. Have so many that there's never a queue, and no one complains that they have to go far. That's democracy. The price is negligible.
Unless you're relying on suppressing the capacity of certain parts of your population to vote to win an election, like my country's right wing government has done, because last minute enrollment voters tend to not vote for them.
That’s making quite a mental leap. What’s wrong is changing the rules halfway during a voting day, specially in one of the largest countries in the world with uneven logistics.
Polls were closed in some places, voting boxes sealed, and had to be reopened.
While not necessarily bad, it can create fraud suspicions. Just arrange a longer voting time from the get go. Else it looks you are stalling and boosting turnout out for your side.
PS it’s quite common in some countries to put people on buses and make them vote in exchange of money.
The problem is the bias of the court. When Bolsonaro asked for one in 2022, it was denied. "Everybody had the opportunity to vote". When Bolsonaro asked for one yesterday due to heavy rain in the south, they didn't grant it either. They granted it immediately when Lula asked it though, and the person who did so was Lula's former lawyer. It's clear that there is no fairness to be found in the Brazilian institutions tasked with running fair elections.
By the end of the next four years, Lula will finish his term with 70% of the seats of the supreme court being filled directly by his party.
They also stacked the lesser courts with judges which support him. Including the electoral court. We had judges who openly declared their vote for him judging his electoral complaints this entire month. Any guess which way the judges leaned?
Did you know one of the supreme court judges used to be Lula's own lawyer?
> and why does that mean that they're popular and win elections?
The supreme court literally engaged in unconstitutional censorship in order to get him elected in 2022. Judges also constantly barred Bolsonaro from doing things in 2022 that Lula was allowed to do this month, like lowering taxes at the gas pump before the election.
The supreme court was so incredibly politically active in 2022, it destabilized the country and led directly to the January 8th nonsense where people asked the military to enact a coup.
There's a saying here: "judges = gods". Actual lawyer told me that. And Lula owns the judges. If you don't see how having literal judge-god-kings on your side can tilt elections, then I don't know what I can possibly say to convince you.
Here's an example from the last four years: Lula implemented a tax on financial operations, our elected congress blocked it, then he went to the supreme court and they rammed it down our throats. Yes, the supreme court raised taxes. Not a single person voted for those judges, by the way. This is the Venezuela governance model.
The whole point of electing the right wing was to make those gods bleed. I'm going to go ahead and deflate my expectations now.
Go a few more years back, and it's hard to say the Brazilian right-wing aren't reaping what they sowed wrt. supreme court/judicial branch shenanigans.
But that doesn't make you wrong. All presidential republics are like this when push comes to shove. There are two branches of government with equal claim to popular legitimacy, therefore every presidential republic in the world reels from one constitutional crisis to another like a drunken sailor.
> Go a few more years back, and it's hard to say the Brazilian right-wing aren't reaping what they sowed wrt. supreme court/judicial branch shenanigans.
My exploration of this mess ended at around 2019 which is when the "fake news" inquisition began. It's entirely possible that they were abusing their power for much longer, but I sincerely don't know. Please post details if you do.
> But that doesn't make you wrong.
Thank you.
> All presidential republics are like this when push comes to shove.
My impression is this is a Latin American phenomenon. It's how Maduro governed Venezuela, for example. It's the reason why Bukele had to depose the judiciary in El Salvador.
I simply have never heard of or read about anything similar ever happening in the US or Europe. Would appreciate counterpoints.
Well, the EU has a "parliament" that can't change the law, and the EU supreme court (ECJ) has been caught in the past hearing cases where both sides are being argued by the same law firm and the plaintiff didn't even know they were engaged in a court case at all. There was no investigation and nothing was changed. EU media is in general pretty supine and doesn't report on EU level corruption, so given such shenanigans it seems likely the ECJ is quite corrupt. So it's not unknown in Europe.
> Here's an example from the last four years: Lula implemented a tax on financial operations, our elected congress blocked it, then he went to the supreme court and they rammed it down our throats. Yes, the supreme court raised taxes. Not a single person voted for those judges, by the way. This is the Venezuela governance model.
Do you have a source to read up on this?
Surely they're ruling on whether the executive branch has the power to do XYZ, right? So they don't directly endorse a policy, they decide who can do what?
You see the same in the US, with the decisions largely going the other way.
Lula writes up a sort of decree raising taxes on financial operations such as BRL/USD conversions.
Our elected congress blocked it. That is their role.
Supreme court swoops in and "reestablishes" the decree.
Through this simple mechanism, president can bypass congress and senate and rule monocratically like a king.
The supreme court judges are appointed by the president himself. Lula will stack the court with four additional justices loyal to him by the end of the next four years. He will own 70% of the court. He can do anything.
Bolsonaro was our last chance to fix this shit. Plan was to elect a right wing senate and president, then impeach all of those judges. We managed to elect the senators, but not the president. If we impeach the judges now, it just buys Lula even more seats in the court. It's pretty much over now.
> Our elected congress blocked it. That is their role.
So in a Republic, the President has the right to issue decrees. That's what makes it the executive branch. Congress can make laws that block specific things but they would need to pass legislation? And assuming this power is granted on the constitution, they can't change this (easily).
> That is exactly what they do.
They rule if the president can issue that decree, no? They don't have the ability to change any of that?
> If we impeach the judges now, it just buys Lula even more seats in the court.
There’s a clear right-wing/centrist majority in Congress, so Lula’s Supreme Court nominations will not be that partisan.
Many Justices do need to be investigated and impeached, and it’s our job now to pressure congressmen in that regard, and then pressure again to make sure future nominees are much better.
For some reason, I seriously doubt the senate is going to move a finger against the judges. I just have a bad feeling about this. I don't think they're going to do anything anymore.
I really hope you're right though. If even a single judge suffers consequences, this election will have been a major win.
probably not in the first 2 years with the current Senate president but then next it is less clear. There are 3 conservative judges also involved in the banco Master scandal case so let's see how it ends.
Really? Didn't the Bolsanaro campaign also request an extension of the voting deadline due to water logging and transportation problems in parts of the country?
Yeah, and the court was not at all inclined to grant it, just like they didn't grant an extension when Bolsonaro asked for one in 2022. "Everyone had the opportunity to vote", the judge said back then.
Then Lula asks for one, and suddenly his former lawyer turned supreme court judge is of course moved to the point of tears so he grants it immediately. The irony is not lost on me.
Bolsonaro was prohibited from running lives inside the Palácio do Alvorada in 2022. Lula does so with impunity, court rejects regulation when denounced.
Bolsonaro banned from using UN speech during his campaign. Attempts to denounce Lula for the same behavior went nowhere. Judge is known to vote for Lula.
Bolsonaro prevented from explaining his Auxílio Brasil benefits to the public until after the election. Lula can spam people with the same content all he wants with total impunity.
"son of a failed coup organizer" is an absolute false statement which only serves those in power to criminalize dissent and have been seen in many authoritarian regimes during their implementation.
* Lula did something unusual, which is win in the second round after trailing in the first. This is a first in Brazilian politics, so simple pattern matchers are surprised.
I'm not surprised. If you have one terrible candidate, in the first round you can vote for whomever you like. In the second round, however, you need to ensure they lose, so you vote for the opposite party, whomever they might be.
France here might disagree. If you have an overly scattered left wing by voting whomever in the first round... you end up with a macron flavored moron as the sole non far-right option in the second round and have to deal with this shit for the next five years.
The only way for the far right to win the second round is to end up against Mélanchon, so what you write is totally in line with what Le Pen would want you to propagate.
There were lots of candidates in the first round, neither of today's candidates got 50%+1 so they had a runoff, all the voters from those other candidates were forced to pick one of the two
Mass protests and voter activation might have tipped the scale towards Lula. There was a rude awakening among mainly the younger populace when Bolsonaro jr managed to get the most votes in the first round.
~3 million more people voted compared to the first round. 30 million still didn’t vote. You just pay a fine to put your registration in order for the next time, there are no long term consequences.
Voting is mandatory but people aren't dragged to the polls. If they don't vote they get a small fine, the repercussions are tiny. So participation is still an issue, there were about 30 million people who didn't vote in the runoff, against 33 million in the first round.
Other than the other points made, 16-17, 70+, and illiterate are granted voluntary suffrage. Some of the activation came from convincing those people to show up and cast a ballot.
> I was seeing the reports from the first pass which said it was almost guaranteed that Lula would not win because of what the results of the first were. I wonder what caused that prediction to fail.
Those weren't, as far as I can see, real predictions; they were people saying "the runner up in the runoff has never won, therefore the runner up in the runoff _cannot_ win". Which is fairly ridiculous; it's a _tiny_ sample size.
Well the first round was extremely close and so was the second one where he only won by 3.5 points. The 1st round loser winning the 2nd round is unprecedented but shifts of that magnitude are not. The margin only shifted by 5 points.
Also I think Lula's campaign successfully highlighted Meta's election interference to the voting base which energized a lot of supporters to turn out
It was anyway a lose-lose situation. I hope to see Brazil free from 'bolsopetismo'/'bolsolulismo' (as some of we call this disease to keep Bolsonaro and Lula or their parties on the presidential room) soon, but here we go for another 4 years...
I agree with you. I wish we had better candidates. The right had Dr. Enéas Carneiro, who's dead. The left has PCO, which is awesome but is shunned by the rest of the left because they are bold enough to criticize Lula and PT. Neither ever had or will have any realistic chance of ever winning.
It's not going to end until Lula literally drops dead. This country proved that today.
On the same day, in Serbia, the long-term incumbent was defeated by a party/movement that has been founded only 2 years ago as a response to corruption issues. So change can happen.
Serbia has actual corruption. Lula went to jail because when Bolsonaro was in charge they made up a case about him accepting beachfront property. Even the UN Human Rights Committee found that the prosecutions violated his due process and political rights
Lula's Fala.BR platform is a massive step up for free and public access to information for all Brazilians and federal contracting procedures have been standardized and oversight has been massively improved.
Lula represents a massive step towards fighting corruption
> Lula went to jail because when Bolsonaro was in charge they made up a case about him accepting beachfront property.
Lula went to jail before Bolsonaro came into power and got released while he was president. It's a well remembered case in Latin America and it's easy to correct you on that.
Well he wasn't elected yet, but the reason his conviction was thrown out by the Supreme Court and the reason the United Nations stepped in to call the case out as bogus was because investigative journalists from The Intercept got ahold of leaked Telegram messages proving Bolsonaro made a deal with the corrupt judge Sérgio Moro.
The case is the reason Lula was barred from running against Bolsonaro. After Bolsonaro won, he appointed Moro as the Minister of Justice and Public Security as a political reward.
The case has been thoroughly disproven as bogus by journalists and even the United Nations. It's genuinely depressing how many people still believe in it
Flavio promised to pardon his father, so the other effect of this is that Bolsonaro stays in jail. Although by jail I mean house arrest, which is something that rich, powerful people manage to get somehow and is barely a punishment.
I mean, to be fair, the restriction on freedom is the real punishment. I don't think anyone could honestly say that house arrest isn't genuinely undesirable, especially for rich and powerful people.
What's the point of having all that money and power if you can't actually do the things you want?
There's another layer. For rich and powerful people, being confined to one place is very dangerous. Every one of their enemies know where to send an assassin. Every lender know where to correct payment. Every burglar knows where the money is.
Interesting how pro-democracy wave after wave strike the shore as Russia's resources dwindle. Perhaps Russia is/was the only thing still keeping those monsters up?
Indeed Russia has had over 20 years of covert operations and generally different philosophy of how to influence a country to your will than the Americans.
This is into "not even wrong" territory. Brazil has a fairly close relationship with Russia, they're a fellow founding BRICS member - and Lula was president when it was formed. What would Putin get from having US (Trump) ally Bolsonaro Jr. over him?
And while it's great that the murder-happy fascist didn't win, it's not exactly a great win for democracy. It's just stopping the bleeding. Besides the obvious problem of being allied with Russia and China, Brazil has a worrying "anti fake news" law. Like elsewhere, it seems the slightly-better guys aren't eager to roll back power grabs that now benefit themselves.
Really? I couldn't tell. In the last debate alone, the main TV network conceded to Flavio's request to not use live fact checking systems on TV. Turns out 75% of his statements were not true. He's facing no consequences for that, nor is the network for hosting and broadcasting his fake facts.
Such laws always work better for one side than the other, it's always selective about which facts get checked and which false news get suppressed. I don't know about how trusted that media network is in Brazil, but from all we've seen from other countries, authoritative fact checking from old information monopolies just fan the flames. It wouldn't surprise me if conceding to the request was the best they could do in the situation.
Fact checking systems often lack context and self-correction mechanisms, suffer from selection bias and numerous other problems that doesn't elevate them above other forms of media. Especially media that doesn't claim to be an authoritative source.
You probably could have constructed a fact checker that would have said that 75% is true, the completely other way around. For most truths or facts that is entirely possible without any contradiction if you change perspective. This basic media literacy isn't optional and it cannot be outsourced.
That's true, and indeed the fact checking they posted online sometimes lacked nuance. But they actually tried to tackle that exact problem by labeling several statements as "not quite right", and all facts had a description, it was not black and white. I also understand that in live TV that nuance would be lost. But some statements were 100% straight out lies. Those could be even flagged by the debate moderator.
Well, at least I could read that about Bolsonaro, that's for sure. Being hardline Trump supporters, Bolsonaros are not very fond of things like being in BRICS or making business with China.
I guess Putin doesn't really care whether you are red or blue, but who do you align with, or who do you oppose.
Russia occupies a weird area where they have a natural affinity with third worldists and anti-imperialists. Historically a lot of Russian propaganda has targeted the western left (see Russia Today which often looks straight up progressive) but they're clearly also targeting the far right
I think this framing is pretty much disinformation itself. Sure, Russia tries to influence elections like every other country does as well, democracies or not.
Currently we see such claims resurfacing on topics like Brexit or other contemporary issues. If you look at the hard data of visibility on the attempts of Russia, they are in a similar spot as their economy. Doing decently poorly.
If any domestic news article or politician points their fingers at Russia, it is probably to distract from something else. Sure, if you are situated in Ukraine, the story is different. The latter does have to swallow the results of the moronic foreign policy of quite a few western nations for that matter and it would be served well if a bit of sensible reflection would be put on the table.
Yes, many countries have them in some form or another. Their existence is not proof of anything.
In fact there is no proof about any impact. As someone who is online too much already, it is highly doubtful the impact is significant and there are more studies pointing to the opposite. High school teens to more impressive online raids if you say you dislike k-pop. Some claim there is a background effect, but anyway...
Troll farms have an interest to overstate their impact. Are you a troll? Easy accusation, isn't it?
Turns out people that voted incorrectly on issues like Brexit where quite focused on Brexit as a multi-faceted political issue. For example they might have objected to be called victims of Russian propaganda. Which is a statement on the level of tea leaf reading.
That's a mind-boggling viewpoint when the US/Trump heavily interfered to prop up Bolsonaro. US has also been propping up dictators throughout SA, especially since trump's reelection
422 comments
[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 24.3 ms ] threadGotta look on the bright side. Bolsonaro was closer to US interests than I'd like. If the elected right wing senate manages to at least impeach some supreme court justices next year, I'm going to be OK with this.
I submitted the news too and it got flagged:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237256
Both candidates supported that decision.
It's also inconsistent with the court's own precedent. Extending voting hours was deemed illegal back in 2022. "Everybody had the chance to vote", said Alexandre de Moraes.
After Lula lost in the 1st round, suddenly it became legal again. The irony is not lost on me. That's the pattern with the leftist judges in the courts. The supreme court judge who decided it used to be Lula's own lawyer.
If Bolsonaro did not want it done in this election, then why did Bolsonaro ask for it to be done in this election?
Bolsonaro's son asked for an extension this election due to heavy rains in the south. As far as I can tell, it was also denied.
Lula asks for an extension this election due to busses being grounded because Lula-aligned syndicates slapped Lula insignias on them which is an electoral crime. Lula's former lawyer turned supreme court judge approves it.
It is obvious that the Brazilian institutions, and these judges in particular, wanted Lula to win. They were going to be impeached otherwise.
Court agreed, they didn't feel everyone had a chance to vote this time. Approved. Legal.
This seems hard for you to wrap your head around for some reason.
https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/eleicoes/zanin-prorroga-eleicao...
("Zanin extends voting until 7 p.m. this Sunday nationwide.")
Please review the HN guidelines:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Many cities had their mayor cancelling free public transportation and stopping people from going voting. Extending the time is a reaction, not a first action. Furthermore, the ask didn't come just from Lula's party, it came from both candidates [1].
2022 Brazil had the Federal Police Director actively interfering with transportation as well.
[1] - https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/eleicoes/o-que-diz-o-codigo-ele...
Can you explain?
You are right winger but don't like the Brazilian right wing aligning with the US right wing, but do like the politicians who are aligned with the US right wing?
Bolsonaro generally supports privatizing Brazilian state companies and selling them off to foreigners. I don't want that. Especially not to the US and Israel.
Lula on the other hand is better aligned with China, which is also what I want.
Lula and myself are aligned on these two points. So this outcome is not entirely bad for me.
The problem I have with Lula is his party's obnoxious taxation, lack of a real plan for reindustrialization, continuous defense of criminals, and most importantly, his total domination of the supreme court. I voted for the right specifically to see those judges impeached and imprisoned, because I absolutely oppose everything they did in 2022. I'm of the opinion that presidents and elections barely matter anymore, because it's the supreme court that runs the country. It's the Venezuela governance model: president appoints god-like supreme court judges and rules monocratically through them.
The 1st round this month was such an upset not because of Bolsonaro but because of the senate. They are the ones who can impeach supreme court judges, and it struck true fear into the court. Brazilian senate is absolute majority right wing now, and they could still impeach those judges. I'm not going to hold out hope for that anymore, but if I see at least one judge bite the dust I'll still call it a major win.
And yet, somehow 100% of your posts are repeating debunked Brazilian right wing propaganda. How curious.
Also, "debunked" is debatable. I don't accept your portrayal of extremely complex issues as settled, and I also don't accept "official" explanations of anything. I always try to reach my own conclusions and form my own opinions.
I came here to discuss my viewpoints in an attempt to find truth for myself. If you don't want to help with that, then kindly don't reply to me again.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44948769
This is a bad day for Brazil.
Just shows that Democracy is dying all over the world.
This time around, some guy in Lula's party created "Lula's Army", a channel with millions of people in it. Suddenly, it was fine.
They used to cry about "fake news" and call for censorship at every opportunity, and they'd get it because they own the courts. Now they were the ones spreading "fake news" of all sorts. Did they get censored? Nah.
Censorship in Brazil is unconstitutional, by the way. Political censorship is doubly so. It doesn't matter, because they own the supreme court.
Although fortunately, it didn't seem to be work: it seems Facebook and Twitter largely ignored Brazil's courts and Flavio Bolsonaro had a bigger social media presence despite "Lula's Army".
Both will lead the country to pork-barrel, corruption and government paralysis by debt. Both are "unfortunate".
There are 2 solutions for all Brazilian problems: Guarulhos and Galeão. The rest is just circus.
There is exactly one politician that once upon a time represented me: Dr. Enéas Carneiro. Ironically, his ideas were closest to the Chinese Communist Party. He's dead now.
The left wing has PCO, a real left wing party, and I agree with them on a daily basis. They're shunned by everyone, and were even persecuted by the supreme court along with the right wing.
I'm increasingly resigned to the idea that immigration is the only option by now.
The world is more complex than "fascist" vs "communist"
Polymarket was like 80% Bolsonaro Jr to 20% Lula 7pm, 7:15 it changed to 60% Lula. There were multiple reports in the news websites about it favoring Bolsonaro which itself probably made some people vote for him.
I'm quite happy with the result tho. Let's see how the far right opposition will take this loss. I'm already expecting the worse.
Surprising to see Bolsonaro lose at this point, but the real upset of this election was caused by the senate. The whole point of electing the right wing was to impeach the judges. So long as that happens, I will be satisfied.
The next four years were going to seriously suck for Flávio. Now the economic bomb is going to explode in Lula's hands. I was tempted to vote for Lula myself just to make that happen. It's the supreme court issue that stopped me.
Impeachment of the supreme court is precisely what will save this country. They have been ruling monocratically since they launched the "fake news" inquisition in 2019. People can stomach a Lula win, even I have points where I intersect with the guy. The thing is not a single Brazilian voted for those judges.
And so, you feel comfortable foisting your political views on a tech forum, even when you are repeatedly told that your views are unhinged and that you need serious help?
Same here. The idea of lobbying for a voting system where your vote for a candidate might hurt them, or where you might be better off not voting at all than expressing your honest preference is bizarre to me. If IRV was the only alternative, sure, but we have multiple other systems which don't have as bad tradeoffs. STAR or Ranked Robin would be so much better, but the Equal Vote Coalition doesn't seem to have the power behind it that FairVote does.
STAR has been used approximately nowhere. STAR is also one of the few seriously advocated-for voting methods in which it's possible for the first choice of a majority to lose, although that isn't likely to happen in practice.
Of course just because there are technically flaws, doesn't mean it's not an improvement over the status quo.
Instant Runoff Ranked ballots are particularly well suited for electing a single position like a Mayor or President. Given that it's still a majoritarian system like First Pass the Post, it's a much more questionable system to use for other things like electing a parliament.
I remember seeing a 2D chart representing voter preferences on the X and Y axis, coloured by who wins under those preferences (and some assumptions). Some systems showed clear biases towards certain outcomes. IRV had a pretty symmetric shape but with a random mess of different colours in the middle.
The problem IMO is when there's better options but it's hard to get people to care enough to switch systems again. I'm hoping Ranked Robin can catch on so at least places that went to IRV can switch to a better system without new ballots.
The issue is that you can't have 'Later No Harm' and 'Favorite Betrayal' at the same time.
Star Vote scores high on both but it can't be perfect.
See: https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s10602-022-09389-3?sh...
PS for those that don't know:
STAR Voting (Score Then Automatic Runoff) works in two stages: 1. Voters score candidates from 0 to 5. 2. The two candidates with the highest total scores become finalists. 3. The finalist preferred by more voters wins.
So it combines score voting and runoff. Meaning it favors centrist candidates that are prefered by most people over somebody that can turn out the base.
You can vote for or against as many candidates as you want. Take the top 2 score getters and do a runoff. This means in the first round you can have as many candidates as you want. Those with no name recognition get no support. Also it prevents the situation so many find themselves in where both candidates are deeply unpopular but we feel we have no other choices. If the most well known candidates are deeply divisive then they won't get through.
The runoff gives people time to research the 2 candidates.
Now he will face a much bigger opposition in Congress and therefore will have to find a middle ground.
I expect his policies to move even further to the right. This might pave the way for his vice-president Alckmin, a historical right-winger, to run in the 2030 elections — likely against São Paulo’s governor Tarcísio de Freitas, also a right-winger and considered more moderate than the Bolsonaros despite being associated with them.
(reposting my own comment from a related thread)
Also, nobody can beat Dilma on cutting taxes from the rich.
https://smalands.org/en/the-cold-wars-unholy-war-how-the-cia...
Those, the "we must kill all the criminals!!", the actual nazis and all the other people that identify with the Bolsonaro family add up to about 15% of the country.
https://uk-debt.info/timeline
lula is a little less crazy (compared to bolsonaro), likely not anti-science, preserves the amazon, seems to care about keeping the same constituition and so on, but he heaves his hand when it comes to (mostly populist) spending, like there's no tomorrow.
he thinks he is helping the poor, but it is just for short term. so much public debt, in a few years everyone, rich or poor, will have pay the price, with interest. people that likes him usually say they don't like milei, but his incredible debt build up is actually a future-milei magnet.
also, after so much terms and "custo brazil" ("Brazilian (Business) Cost Burden"?) still prohibitive, the country never goes up from its terrible positions in making business rankings. one can just not hope he does anything better now after so much terms. his spending is too demand biased.
This is key to his reelection. He literally ran on a "Bolsonaro will end Bolsa Família" campaign.
It's unfortunate. Lula inherited a post-Washington consensus neoliberal Brazil. He had nearly 20 years to undo all that and reindustrialize the country, thereby putting us on China's path.
I would have voted for him regardless of ideology if he had done it, but he didn't. It's just easier to just anesthetize the population and put them on paliative care with free money.
> he thinks he is helping the poor, but it is just for short term.
This "short term" is unbearably long... But I do see signs that the system is reaching its limits. Government was already having trouble paying pensions before Vorcaro.
> so much public debt, in a few years everyone, rich or poor, will have pay the price, with interest.
Bankers love Lula for a reason. Record profits.
There is crazy right and significantly more normal left. And if you want the center to win, you need to ackwnowledge that. Anything else helps the more crazy side.
Need I say more?
A major reason it isn't working for now is because Donald Trump is, in addition to being a corrupt autocrat, incredibly incompetent. We shouldn't have to rely on that.
I don't think "Oooh. Scary muslims!" works any less well if it's required to say "Elon Musk" rather than "American Apple Pie Goodness PAC" or whatever.
It might make a difference for smaller donors, especially if they're more sensitive about their personal PR.
Or, I suppose, you could fix it by abolishing America's Written Constitution so that its legislature can just write legislation for this. I think that would go down like cold sick - Americans love their Written Constitution.
The most "sensible" application would be for betting markets I thought.
The github link in the article does not work
It was there last night. Now I get a 404.
It usually kicks in when 10-20 % of the votes have been counted and switches back to raw results near the 90% mark.
Didn't find an exact date when they started using it; an article says "dates back to 1960s" but it's definitely been a staple in 2000s.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/elections/100000009683078/h...
It always surprises me that USA, the self-appointed bastion of democracy worldwide, has such tortuous and malleable elections; and that no serious academic discussion occurs despite the endemic flaws. Even these days, the PREP's Wikipedia page lacks an English translation.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programa_de_Resultados_Elector...
A directorate where executive power is distributed over multiple people and executive policy is decided on in a concordat it a much better solution.
But it doesn't help that the alternative far-right candidate is an extremist nutjob whose appointment for the presidential race was done for noone other than nepotism (bearing his jailed father name). That alienated alot of his voting base who wanted a more competent candidate.
Ironically (or not at all) the man who individually received the most money from that scheme is the head of Flavio Bolsonaro's party, and the party who received the most payoff as a whole was Jair Bolsonaro's party at the time.
Politics in Brazil require a great deal of consensus, obscure dealmaking and corruption.
It won for Bolsonaro whose campaign nailed it in 2018. It didn’t win in 2022 because he was completely bad in dealing with pandemics (mocking people dying and saying he had nothing to do with it being president).
Now, Lula’s campaign was absolutely dead during the whole time. Until it lost in the legislative by a mile and in the President run had a partial loss in the first round. Then the campaign lit up after the partial upset.
Janones, an energetic young guy elected to legislative with good online presence led the campaign. He achieved creating a WhatsApp group with 11 million people called “Lula’s army”. He would give the directions and the people would obey almost blindly.
The interwebs (basically WhatsApp + Instagram) got flooded with this top to bottom Lula’s campaign.
The first round results made Bolsonaro very favorite. Lula victory was a huge upset. I put the merit in this incessant social media campaign.
The thing is: “centrally planned cohesive campaign” looks a lot like a cult. The point of the campaign is not critical thought or argumentation, it is incessant messaging. Think fandoms.
Bolsonaro voters pejorative nickname from past campaigns was they were all “cattle”. Because that is how they behaved online. Ironically, what worked for Lula voters this year was they behaving like “cattle”. Just reposting and following this central orders on what to post, what to say, what to dress.
The thing is, it works. Cult-like fandoms work in elections. The right won a few elections like this in the world. In Brazil, the left just learned how to do it was well.
The more mindless posters a politician has following their campaign HQ orders, the more votes they have.
And also because the entire state apparatus was engaged in unconstitutional censorship of his "centrally organized, cohesive, persistent online engagement" machine, which is what wins elections, as you noted.
And now that Janones set up his own "Lula's Army", Brazilian institutions did not manifest even a fraction of the energy they had shown while persecuting Bolsonaro.
Lula was allowed to do everything Bolsonaro was persecuted for in 2022. He even lowered taxes on fuels, and got away with it. The tax cut ends tomorrow.
I remind you that censorship is unconstitutional in Brazil, and political censorship doubly so. The supreme court walked all over the constitution when they censored him.
"Fake news" is still speech and cannot and must not be censored. I question the supreme court's ability to determine whether any political statement is true or false in an impartial manner: they declared fake things which I know are true. They said it was "fake news" that Lula was a friend of communist dictators. After he won, I was forced to watch him literally roll out the red carpet and welcome Maduro to my country with full military honors. It was a nationwide gaslighting campaign.
Your side also pushed plenty of "fake news", only with total impunity. Claimed he was going to end the healthcare system. Claimed he was going to end government benefits. Claimed he was going to abolish female suffrage. Bolsonaro has repeatedly said he was never going to do any of that, yet the pushing persisted, and not a single judge lifted a finger to censor you people.
Must be nice, having literal judge-god-kings on your side.
As is currently observable in the United States, given consolidation of power in the three branches of government, it is no longer necessary to follow the law or the constitution. Minimal research into who from the US government the Bolsonaros associate with tells you what their agenda would have been in the "Bolsonaro 2" government: complete, transparent self-interest and complete disregard for actually administering the country for the benefit of the people.
Taking him at his word in the last three months of the campaign after 20 years of a vapid/nothing political career full of police investigations and associations with organized crime makes no sense.
What other cases are you referring to? Be specific
Investigative journalists from The Intercept proved this collaboration when they got ahold of leaked Telegram messages. That investigation is what led the Supreme Court to throw out the conviction and the United Nations to step in and call it out as bogus.
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/12/secret_files_show_how...
Are we really just going to ignore all the other evidence though? All the testimonies? The corruption can't possibly have been fake. It's scandal after scandal, Vorcaro is just the latest episode.
Note that I'm not denying that the Bolsonaros are corrupt. I think every single politician in this country is corrupt.
Doesn't that, if anything, support the idea that Lula is fighting corruption?
Bolsonaro tried to claim that Vorcaro made a payment to the Lula Institute but the police and even Vorcaro himself denied this ever happened. Lula is also the one pushing the Supreme Court to disclose everything about the case to the public
It's wild to me how much of the public associates thoroughly disproven corruption issues with Lula. Especially when the Bolsonaros has much more clear and direct evidence of corruption (e.g. the financing of the Dark Horse movie). The social media campaigns have clearly been very effective and the actual investigative journalism is being drowned out
https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/politica/lula-esteve-com-vorcar...
https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/amp/mercado/2026/02/nao-havia-...
Master has confirmed payments to people connected to Lula, including Mantega, the guy who arranged the above meeting.
https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/amp/poder/2026/04/master-decla...
That meeting was an attempt to obtain presidential intervetion. Apparently, he felt disadvantaged against the bigger banks.
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/how-an-obscure-bank...
What Lula himself said in this meeting is anyone's guess, but apparently Vorcaro left it very satisfied.
https://noticias.uol.com.br/colunas/natalia-portinari/2026/0...
At this point though, Lula's corruption or lack thereof is completely irrelevant. It's Vorcaro's connection to supreme court judges that are most important. How can we possibly try anyone whatsoever for corruption when the judiciary itself is tainted?
You just made a persuasive argument that Lula's corruption case had to be thrown out because of a partial judge. I accepted your argument and updated my world view.
I am now completely convinced that it is the judiciary that is the problem. It makes no sense anymore for us to even so much as speculate about the corruption of any politician until the judiciary is fixed.
If the supreme court isn't fixed, there is no doubt in my mind that it will turn into a stalinistic "find me the man and I'll find you the crime" situation. The supreme court is completely aligned with Lula right now, so I'm sure the left is going to love it. Remember, however, that the left used to call Alexandre de Moraes an extreme right wing fascist, racist and genocider when he was nothing but a justice secretary in São Paulo.
You could argue that about pretty much every politician and their supporters in India. The right wing keeps winning because the left refuses to address the fears of a majority of the Indian population. Even if those fears are unwarranted - dismissing them as "uneducated" and "blind sheep" alienates people even more.
Fact is, whether you like it or not, the party in power has been in power only for a few years, and has achieved more than the other party did in 60 years.
Do you really believe that the INC would have handled Covid better? They were trying to kill off indigenous vaccines to favour Pfizer etc who (a) refused trials in Indian conditions and (b) wanted $62 per shot.
Do you really believe that they would have managed to keep fuel prices in check given Trump's war on Iran?
Do you really believe that Rahul Gandhi is qualified to run a home owner's association, leave alone a nation of 1.4 billion people?
Take a look in the mirror then next time you use that phrase.
And when you correctly use the word to describe what they are supporting, you are inciting violence.
The word is absolutely meaningless now.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists
Writers Guild of America
Directors Guild of America
National Education Association
American Federation of Teachers
American Psychological Association
American Sociological Association
Modern Language Association
American Historical Association
Association of American Universities
Columbia University
Harvard University
Yale University
University of California, Berkeley
Oberlin College
Reed College
NPR
PBS
The New York Times
The Washington Post
The Guardian
Human Rights Campaign
GLAAD
Good luck finding examples of the opposite direction.
Either your list is way out of date or the Overton Window is so far to the right in the US that this statement is somehow possible.
There are many more institutions on that list that are explicitly not left wing by non-US standards.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists
Writers Guild of America
Directors Guild of America
National Education Association
American Federation of Teachers
American Psychological Association
American Sociological Association
Modern Language Association
American Historical Association
Association of American Universities
Columbia University
Harvard University
Yale University
University of California, Berkeley
Oberlin College
Reed College
NPR
PBS
The New York Times
The Washington Post
The Guardian
Human Rights Campaign
GLAAD
Account created 3 months ago
It can be better than the alternatives and still not good.
Lula served two terms from 2002-2010, and came back in 2022 (now to serve until 2030, if he lives until then).
I do think term limits are good, but nonconsecutive 16 years is actually an ok limit IMHO. Maybe not the one I'd prefer for my government, but not necessarily objectively bad for democracy.
Still, as you said, this context is important. Lula left in 2010 and came back in 2022 after having been arrested, freed, and then defeating Jair Bolsonaro, who was the current president and a fierce rival.
That said, I think reelections are actually more damaging in the legislative (and it is not uncommon to have congressmen and senators for 20, 30 years straight).
Long-term politicians result in "behind the scenes" doing the real work of running things.
Wait a minute ...
Australia has no term limits and has famously had the longest serving prime minister (12 years) followed by extremely short terms. All seemed to represent the general will of the population.
I’m not a political junkie but that makes sense to me. The critters who get your vote are just part of the system that runs the place.
You might say he introduced a kind of populism, where politicians only care about the next election round and their reputation, to the cost of important decision-making and long-term thinking. Unfortunately this is kind of a working strategy, a weakness of democracy, where the current centre-right government is struggling with all the aggravated problems not dealt with in the past, and the voters think "well, perhaps we have to vote VVD again where these problems didn't exist", or vote more right-wing by populism that makes immigration the cause of all problems.
Today, it’s always either the fault of the other party (who never had a real chance of making big changes), the rich (but if you tax them too much they leave and you’re left with no economy, see France), or the foreigners.
As stated, this is merely a truism, and you have not justified this belief. Would you care to? It seems very irrational to me. High office is one of the most difficult and most impactful jobs in the world. It's easy to do a terrible job and screw everyone over while enriching yourself, of course, but extremely challenging to do a good job. You are responsible for the fate of tens or hundreds of millions of people, and must exercise incredible judgment on the breadth of every macro problem society faces while simultaneously maneuvering both internal support and foreign relations. Why would we not want to make this most important of all jobs a job where people can actually grow into the role and demonstrate expertise in it? You are strictly only eliminating the electorate's options. There is already a corrective mechanism for voters to evict someone doing a bad job [whether they choose to exercise it is another matter, but that's literally democracy in action], but there should be no mechanism to sustain a job well done?
Also... too long in power makes it easier to dismantle the democratic process.
The entire American system of checks and balances is not designed to get optimal leadership, it is designed to limit damage from bad leadership.
Then elect someone else next time. This, however, is a criticism of democracy more than it is a justification for term limits.
> The entire American system of checks and balances is not designed to get optimal leadership, it is designed to limit damage from bad leadership.
How's that working out for you? You got Trump and Biden as a direct result of term limits. The way I see it, your system has selected for the maximally damaging bad leadership possible.
The US only enacted term limits in 1951. Before that time, only two presidents had attempted to seek third terms (another two attempted but failed to secure even a nomination by a political party), and only one was successful.
And, quite frankly, the only president since the 22nd amendment who I could see wanting to run for a third term is Trump, who does seem to be campaigning for one anyways despite being constitutionally barred from it.
> No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
The 'obvious loophole' is that the text doesn't constrain the number of terms anyone can serve, but instead constrains the number of times someone can be elected as president, so if you run as vice president for someone who agrees to immediately resign to let you be president, you technically don't run afoul of the rule.
(The more likely loophole, following from Trump v Colorado, is that nobody is actually allowed to declare somebody ineligible for president, so the constitution's strictures are meaningless in practice. It truly is a disgusting SCOTUS decision.)
Well how's that working out? There's a reason the rest of the developed democratic world hasn't adopted a strong executive.
Worked out very well for the American system till recently.
Disc: not an American. But it seems to me that Trump won't have a 3rd term, and he is not working actively achieving that. In other countries someone like Trump would be using his power to get elected for a 3rd term. How it has happened in Russia, China, Turkey etc. The reason he isn't doing it is that it is not a realistic option.
Seems like limiting the number of terms is probably one of the best and most useful part of the US political system.
Funnily enough, a lot of people who voted for Flávio only did it because they wanted a change from Lula.
Even with Germany it turned out that Angela Merkel did grave mistakes and Germans were able to find out about those only after she left office. Being continually in office gives you the ability to hide your trials.
If it was not clear, I am not stating that anyone who is in office is automatically the most competent. However, the entire point of a democracy is that you have the option to fire bad candidates. And yet, with term limits, when you do get a competent candidate in office, you do not have the option to keep them in office.
Being the chief executive in a system like brazil's results in a lot of power, for several perfectly good reasons, but it does mean you have to build in safe guards against that power growing.
Regular elections are good, but not sufficient, as a study of recent world history would demonstrate.
Term limits are not a solution either, as a study of recent world history would demonstrate. Clearly there is a need to check power, but perhaps the mechanisms that check power should not also ensure you will never have a truly excellent leader && increase instability from flipflopping policies && give more opportunities for people who will abuse power to take office and ignore the term limits because that's what people who abuse power do. A term limit is only effective against a mildly bad candidate who is not truly willing to abuse their power, because if they are willing to abuse their power they can just ignore it. In that way, you've created a system that caps upside but leaves downside uncapped in practice.
Democracies shouldn't have a "leader", they should have functional governments and strong oppositions. Focusing on a single person never ends well (see the US, China and Russia).
The fall of that system then came about when politically ambitious characters started developing more personal and long-term relations with their troops.
I'd say that's an argument for term limits: you want them to get good but not set roots permanently.
What it loses in efficiency, it gains in avoiding centralization, cult of personality, and encouraging standardization.
"Rome's tradition of having to serve in 'lower offices' before the higher ones meant that when aristocrats inevitably ended up in charge of entire armies they had some level of practical experience and learnings to draw on while commanding".
But yes, much is made of Rome's redundancy in terms of military strength and there's a lot of states during that period that had A King who did everything and then died in a battle and then everything collapsed.
The extreme case which you want to avoid is "politicians" (dictators) desperately clinging to power, because they did things that would get them killed if they ever lost their power, which is a vicious cycle.
I like the swiss model more where one party never gets full power, even if it means societal changes take more time to happen[1], it seems less risky to me as there is never one power grab whose decision can influence the next election by stuff like redistricting, puting clearly leaning judges to federal court, etc.
[1] famous example is the women right to vote in the general election happened in 1971 which is quite shameful
In many of the contemporary cultures (e.g., the post-Alexander greek kingdoms), being toppled from the heights of power would result in exile, imprisonment, or worse; in the republic, you could lose a battle as a general or step down from being consul and still lead a peaceful life afterwards.
One could argue that the change in this situation in the late republic directly resulted in it's downfall--Caesar crossed the Rubicon because he feared prosecution and imprisonment by his opponents once he lost his proconsular immunity.
A "required absence" is a thing in a number of sensitive positions, especially financial/regulated industries.
Obama could have had Bush against the wall at the Hague for his war crimes... and then Trump could have had Obama against the wall at the Hague for his war crimes... and then Biden could have had Trump... and on and one we go.
I check my brake pads every year. Eventually the incumbent pads lose out to some whipper-snapper from the new pads box. I might vote red again or I might switch to blue. It depends how muddy it is. Either way, it’s both a new/old choice as well as a red/blue choice.
Time-in-office is also a major contributor to corruption. Lukashenko has been winning the same election for 30+ years!
It doesn't really show that, though. Putin was not stopped by term limits. Hitler seized power within a year of being elected. Lukashenko established his rigged state within two years. Fujimori launched a self-coup within two years. I'm actually not aware of evidence that term limits have ever meaningfully did anything to impede a would-be wrongdoer.
I'd suggest that term limits are party of a package that rests on strong public faith in democratic institutions. E.g. Macron is about able to hang on, but i doubt he could stay past an electoral defeat because he presides over a nation that won't tolerate it.
Per wikipedia.
Wrt to the latter: the Swiss system prefers the elder candidate.
I would rather limit not amount of terms, but the age. Not eligible for any kind of elections if you are 60+, both as candidate and as voter.
My point is to not let people who are in the final stage of their life to decide how future generation should live.
I really can’t understand how Brazilians (that actually have a multi party system) keep having to choose between two awful candidates.
Day one:
- your predecessor had this and this initiative, see pages 4 to 7 - i don't like that, what alternatives exist - we worked this up at the time, here are the projections which were updated six months ago - good, do that instead - we'll need to redo the numbers - then do so, and brief me again next week
If the latter: Yes, that is actually stupid, but the stupidity lies not in the term limits for politicians, but in the idea that public servants are employed on the grounds of party affiliation.[1]
But replacing large swathes of competent higher officials every time you change government... The only country I know of for sure that does that is the USA. Are you saying that's the way it works in Brazil, too?
___
[1]: Sure, to some extent it exists everywhere, but that's usually only a few sincure posts for old politicians removed from any actual influence by being "promoted diagonally left-upwards". (See, for example, the post of "landshövding" in Sweden.)
Its a fundamental safeguard and a hedge against tyranny. Its why, in general, countries that are lead by one person for life can be very impressive in the short term but inevitably fall apart once the wrong person eventually takes charge. Because the odds are that eventually the wrong person will take charge.
History and present have many examples of the flawed human tendency to latch onto larger-than-life figures.
A benevolent, wise dictator would be the most effective form of government, but we are humans, not angels.
In the US, FDR stood 4 terms, and he was hardly the end of democracy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Jair...
Because some can have critical conversations, with pros and cons, right and wrong doings. But others will lie, cheat and steal, and degrade democracy, with long term impacts.
It is not great true, but it is not Turkey/Russia-level with president for life (yet). Although it is forming a succession crisis in much the same way.
It's wild how closely Brazil's politics have mirrored the US in recent years, at least at a high level. They literally had their own Jan 6 insurrection. Lula, like Biden, was competent enough for a time but ultimately outstayed his welcome and ran for another term when they should have gracefully retired. Unlike Biden, Lula actually imposed some consequences on the people trying to destroy his country's democracy.
BRASIL SAYS FUCK YOU!
There is no contradiction here. When it comes to elections, there should be exactly zero room for doubt.
I am glad the son of a failed coup organizer and a trump puppet didn't get elected and am hopeful for Brazils ability to self govern. Breaking free of US financial monopolies (credit cards) gives me hope they'll continue to produce and innovative into a healthier and competitive world market, but I am also tired of Lula being at the helm and wish someone else could step up and take the reigns. When someone stays in power for so long in a democracy it makes me suspicious of the legitimacy of their power. Are they popular because they are good for the country or are they popular because they have the right people with power, influence, and money on their side.
They have the supreme court. That is all they really need.
Have polling stations open for a week, run them 24 hours on election day. Have so many that there's never a queue, and no one complains that they have to go far. That's democracy. The price is negligible.
Unless you're relying on suppressing the capacity of certain parts of your population to vote to win an election, like my country's right wing government has done, because last minute enrollment voters tend to not vote for them.
https://www.justice.govt.nz/about/news-and-media/news/electo...
Polls were closed in some places, voting boxes sealed, and had to be reopened.
While not necessarily bad, it can create fraud suspicions. Just arrange a longer voting time from the get go. Else it looks you are stalling and boosting turnout out for your side.
PS it’s quite common in some countries to put people on buses and make them vote in exchange of money.
By the end of the next four years, Lula will finish his term with 70% of the seats of the supreme court being filled directly by his party.
They also stacked the lesser courts with judges which support him. Including the electoral court. We had judges who openly declared their vote for him judging his electoral complaints this entire month. Any guess which way the judges leaned?
Did you know one of the supreme court judges used to be Lula's own lawyer?
> and why does that mean that they're popular and win elections?
The supreme court literally engaged in unconstitutional censorship in order to get him elected in 2022. Judges also constantly barred Bolsonaro from doing things in 2022 that Lula was allowed to do this month, like lowering taxes at the gas pump before the election.
The supreme court was so incredibly politically active in 2022, it destabilized the country and led directly to the January 8th nonsense where people asked the military to enact a coup.
There's a saying here: "judges = gods". Actual lawyer told me that. And Lula owns the judges. If you don't see how having literal judge-god-kings on your side can tilt elections, then I don't know what I can possibly say to convince you.
Here's an example from the last four years: Lula implemented a tax on financial operations, our elected congress blocked it, then he went to the supreme court and they rammed it down our throats. Yes, the supreme court raised taxes. Not a single person voted for those judges, by the way. This is the Venezuela governance model.
The whole point of electing the right wing was to make those gods bleed. I'm going to go ahead and deflate my expectations now.
But that doesn't make you wrong. All presidential republics are like this when push comes to shove. There are two branches of government with equal claim to popular legitimacy, therefore every presidential republic in the world reels from one constitutional crisis to another like a drunken sailor.
My exploration of this mess ended at around 2019 which is when the "fake news" inquisition began. It's entirely possible that they were abusing their power for much longer, but I sincerely don't know. Please post details if you do.
> But that doesn't make you wrong.
Thank you.
> All presidential republics are like this when push comes to shove.
My impression is this is a Latin American phenomenon. It's how Maduro governed Venezuela, for example. It's the reason why Bukele had to depose the judiciary in El Salvador.
I simply have never heard of or read about anything similar ever happening in the US or Europe. Would appreciate counterpoints.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/supr...
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-ru...
https://www.cato.org/blog/king-v-burwell-clear-example-legis...
https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-allows-trump-to-fir...
https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/01/looking-back-at-2025-the-... (Trump v CASA, Trump v Illinois)
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a966_1b8e.pdf
Do you have a source to read up on this?
Surely they're ruling on whether the executive branch has the power to do XYZ, right? So they don't directly endorse a policy, they decide who can do what?
You see the same in the US, with the decisions largely going the other way.
https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/economia/noticia/2025-07/en...
Lula writes up a sort of decree raising taxes on financial operations such as BRL/USD conversions.
Our elected congress blocked it. That is their role.
Supreme court swoops in and "reestablishes" the decree.
Through this simple mechanism, president can bypass congress and senate and rule monocratically like a king.
The supreme court judges are appointed by the president himself. Lula will stack the court with four additional justices loyal to him by the end of the next four years. He will own 70% of the court. He can do anything.
Bolsonaro was our last chance to fix this shit. Plan was to elect a right wing senate and president, then impeach all of those judges. We managed to elect the senators, but not the president. If we impeach the judges now, it just buys Lula even more seats in the court. It's pretty much over now.
So in a Republic, the President has the right to issue decrees. That's what makes it the executive branch. Congress can make laws that block specific things but they would need to pass legislation? And assuming this power is granted on the constitution, they can't change this (easily).
> That is exactly what they do.
They rule if the president can issue that decree, no? They don't have the ability to change any of that?
There’s a clear right-wing/centrist majority in Congress, so Lula’s Supreme Court nominations will not be that partisan.
Many Justices do need to be investigated and impeached, and it’s our job now to pressure congressmen in that regard, and then pressure again to make sure future nominees are much better.
I really hope you're right though. If even a single judge suffers consequences, this election will have been a major win.
Then Lula asks for one, and suddenly his former lawyer turned supreme court judge is of course moved to the point of tears so he grants it immediately. The irony is not lost on me.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50239676
https://www.tse.jus.br/comunicacao/noticias/2026/Outubro/cor...
https://www.infomoney.com.br/politica/lula-usa-alvorada-em-l...
Bolsonaro was prohibited from running lives inside the Palácio do Alvorada in 2022. Lula does so with impunity, court rejects regulation when denounced.
https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/politica/tse-mantem-restricoes-...
https://jovempan.com.br/colunistas/bruno-pinheiro/tse-nega-p...
Bolsonaro banned from using UN speech during his campaign. Attempts to denounce Lula for the same behavior went nowhere. Judge is known to vote for Lula.
https://www.poder360.com.br/justica/moraes-veta-campanha-sob...
https://www.tse.jus.br/comunicacao/noticias/2026/Outubro/cge...
Bolsonaro prevented from explaining his Auxílio Brasil benefits to the public until after the election. Lula can spam people with the same content all he wants with total impunity.
https://noticias.stf.jus.br/postsnoticias/stf-invalida-emend...
https://noticias.stf.jus.br/postsnoticias/stf-reconhece-que-...
Supreme court invalidates Bolsonaro's benefit increases during the election year. Lula can increase them with total impunity.
I think it's pretty clear at this point that the court will back Lula.
What do you have to say about this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%932023_Brazilian_co...
Aprende com o nome dele e faz ai um "Já ir". De preferencia no...
* Turnout. Made all the difference.
8 is a really small sample to consider it as unusual, plus the reversal was not that huge 1.8%
So voting activation is to push all those people to not vote blank or arbitrarily.
Those weren't, as far as I can see, real predictions; they were people saying "the runner up in the runoff has never won, therefore the runner up in the runoff _cannot_ win". Which is fairly ridiculous; it's a _tiny_ sample size.
Also I think Lula's campaign successfully highlighted Meta's election interference to the voting base which energized a lot of supporters to turn out
It's not going to end until Lula literally drops dead. This country proved that today.
It's not going to end until the opposition comes up with a competent alternative. Flavio was the worst choice they did.
Lula's Fala.BR platform is a massive step up for free and public access to information for all Brazilians and federal contracting procedures have been standardized and oversight has been massively improved.
Lula represents a massive step towards fighting corruption
Lula went to jail before Bolsonaro came into power and got released while he was president. It's a well remembered case in Latin America and it's easy to correct you on that.
The case is the reason Lula was barred from running against Bolsonaro. After Bolsonaro won, he appointed Moro as the Minister of Justice and Public Security as a political reward.
The case has been thoroughly disproven as bogus by journalists and even the United Nations. It's genuinely depressing how many people still believe in it
It could be argued that the Netflix catalog nowadays is akin to some kind of torture.
What's the point of having all that money and power if you can't actually do the things you want?
As far as I can see it's pretty thin. US interence on the other hand has been open.
https://thebostonreport.com/2026/10/11/russia-brazil-electio...
https://russiancouncil.ru/en/news/russian-and-brazilian-expe...
This is into "not even wrong" territory. Brazil has a fairly close relationship with Russia, they're a fellow founding BRICS member - and Lula was president when it was formed. What would Putin get from having US (Trump) ally Bolsonaro Jr. over him?
And while it's great that the murder-happy fascist didn't win, it's not exactly a great win for democracy. It's just stopping the bleeding. Besides the obvious problem of being allied with Russia and China, Brazil has a worrying "anti fake news" law. Like elsewhere, it seems the slightly-better guys aren't eager to roll back power grabs that now benefit themselves.
Really? I couldn't tell. In the last debate alone, the main TV network conceded to Flavio's request to not use live fact checking systems on TV. Turns out 75% of his statements were not true. He's facing no consequences for that, nor is the network for hosting and broadcasting his fake facts.
You probably could have constructed a fact checker that would have said that 75% is true, the completely other way around. For most truths or facts that is entirely possible without any contradiction if you change perspective. This basic media literacy isn't optional and it cannot be outsourced.
Why indeed.
Here's another oxymoron for you: NGO
I guess Putin doesn't really care whether you are red or blue, but who do you align with, or who do you oppose.
Bolsanaro (the fellow in jail/house arrest) is the one favoured by Trump.
Currently we see such claims resurfacing on topics like Brexit or other contemporary issues. If you look at the hard data of visibility on the attempts of Russia, they are in a similar spot as their economy. Doing decently poorly.
If any domestic news article or politician points their fingers at Russia, it is probably to distract from something else. Sure, if you are situated in Ukraine, the story is different. The latter does have to swallow the results of the moronic foreign policy of quite a few western nations for that matter and it would be served well if a bit of sensible reflection would be put on the table.
Russian troll factories etc are a documented fact, not an opinion. It goes way beyond just "influencing elections".
In fact there is no proof about any impact. As someone who is online too much already, it is highly doubtful the impact is significant and there are more studies pointing to the opposite. High school teens to more impressive online raids if you say you dislike k-pop. Some claim there is a background effect, but anyway...
Troll farms have an interest to overstate their impact. Are you a troll? Easy accusation, isn't it?
Turns out people that voted incorrectly on issues like Brexit where quite focused on Brexit as a multi-faceted political issue. For example they might have objected to be called victims of Russian propaganda. Which is a statement on the level of tea leaf reading.