While Bolsonaro wobbles, Putin plays “chicken”

 

The upcoming presidential election in Brazil has all the sound and fury of the 2020 election here the U.S., with the Trumpist incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, still trailing badly against challenger and former two-term president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Although Bolsonaro’s approval ratings “improved” slightly to 31 percent in reaction to the belated passage of a welfare package to address the economic situation, Lula still holds a 13 percent lead in the polls heading into the first runoff on October 2. Ciro Gomes is running third, and the fact that he and his supporters regard Bolsonaro as a “criminal” does not bode well for Bolsonaro’s chances in the final runoff between the top-two candidates at the end of October. 

 

According the website Statistica, 55 percent of Brazilians claim to have no political ideology, while 21 percent report to being to the right ideologically, compared to 20 percent combined on the left and center. Unfortunately Bolsonaro’s base is as radicalized as Trump’s, and he has done his part (like Trump) to create an atmosphere conducive to violent action. Statistica identified 780 “false or distorted” statements made by Bolsonaro from January to May of this year, and a report by Brazil’s Federal Police last year charged that Bolsonaro had a “clear purpose” in disseminating false claims of election fraud, similar to that of Trump.  

 

According to an Associated Press story last month, the international watchdog group Global Witness tested Facebook’s alleged “safeguards” preventing the publication of false, misleading and even violent posts attacking the integrity of the upcoming election, which Facebook claims it is doing but in fact is not: 

 

Global Witness submitted ten ads to Meta (the owner of Facebook) that obviously violated its policies around election-related advertising. They included false information about when and where to vote for instance, and called into question the integrity of Brazil’s voting machines — echoing disinformation used by malicious actors to destabilize democracies around the world.  

 

Global Witness noted that all of the ads got past Facebook’s censors for publication, although the group did not actually post them after they had been “approved.” A study by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro also found that “researchers identified more than two dozen ads on Facebook and Instagram, for the month of July, that promoted misleading information or attacked the country’s electronic voting machines.” This disinformation campaign seems to be having an effect; according to this chart by Statistica, fifty percent of voters who identify to the right ideologically do not “trust” voting machines: 

 

The 31 percent who expressed doubts on the “unaligned” side is also very disturbing, since they encompass the majority of voters. Those who will doubt the election results from the combined 76 percent of all voters who identify either right-wing or “unaligned” represent 28 percent of all voters. Bolsonaro is obviously running scared because it is almost certain he will lose and by a large margin if Gomes’ supporters move to Lula as expected. But given Bolsonaro’s contempt for democratic norms and habit of delving in conspiracies, whether he accepts defeat any better than Trump seems doubtful, as his continuing campaign to discredit the election has many fearing another January 6-type event in Brazil. 

 

Meanwhile, another dictator wannabe, Vladimir Putin, seems to be playing a game of “chicken” with Europe by continuing to shut down gas supplies through the Nord 1 pipeline to Germany; Trump actually did say something that was correct at the UN speech where we saw the German representatives laughing—Germany, by relying on Russian energy, opened itself up to blackmail by Putin. Although the Russian energy company Gazprom claims that it “found” new leaks it must fix to explain the delay, it is surmised that Putin is hoping that Europe will ease sanctions with the threat of a “colder” than usual winter, that is to say from a gas shortage. 

 

Turkey’s president, Recep Erdogan—who is not exactly a model of democratic principles—has come out to say that Europe is reaping what it sowed by not being “nice” to Putin. Erdogan has been playing both sides as has Modi in India, and who knows what secret deal he has with Putin; what is clear is that Erdogan’s “diplomacy” is no more successful than was Emmanuel Macron’s before the Ukraine invasion.

  

Of course we can understand why Putin is a little miffed, but then again he is trying to paint a “rosy” picture of the current state of the Russian economy, claiming that it will contract only about 2 percent this year. He further made the strange claim that the federal budget will see a “surplus.” With a war going on one wonders how there could be a surplus; but then again we hear stories of Russian soldiers refusing to fight because of the lack of food and munitions. Putin seems to think this is all a numbers game with no understanding of what is happening on the ground. 

 

The German international news website DW quotes one economist who believes that sanctions will have to hold for many more years before there is a sufficient “collapse” of the Russian economy to cause any kind of change in policy or regime, since Putin has been hoarding cash reserves since 2014 after the Crimea invasion. If Europe completely cuts off gas imports from Russia, China will then become the “gas station” of Russia, but at cut-rate prices that will reduce the cash flow. Interestingly, it is alleged that China is secretly reselling gas to Europe it has been purchasing on the cheap from Russia.  

 

Meanwhile, a story in Bloomberg claims that an internal report by Russian economists paints a starker picture than one Putin is publicizing: 

 

Two of the three scenarios in the report show the contraction accelerating next year, with the economy returning to the prewar level only at the end of the decade or later. The “inertial” one sees the economy bottoming out next year 8.3% below the 2021 level, while the “stress” scenario puts the low in 2024 at 11.9% under last year’s level. 

 

A Russian source contacted about this claimed it was just conjecturing of a worst case scenario if nothing was done to halt a downward economic spiral. Still, the long-term outlook is that with a shrinkage of oil and gas markets and with it international cash reserves to buffer the economic impact of sanctions, the Russian economy is likely to hit zero growth by 2050, according to Russian economist Alexander Isakov. 

 

If there is any “certainty” to be had, it is that none of this ever had to happen. I suppose it has to do with one’s “perspective,” but it must be admitted that Russia under Putin has not behaved like a trusted partner in civilized behavior: undermining democratic societies with the cyber-spreading of misinformation to foment mistrust in the election process, the poisoning of expatriates, trying to extinguish the sovereign status of neighboring countries because of its own paranoia and delusions of grandeur. What Putin does inside his own country is his business; if the “average” Russian has a problem with it, they are going to have to find the motivation within themselves to do something about it. But meddling in other countries’ business is another matter.