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Brazil – still the country of hope

Postat den 29th October, 2018, 10:06 av Hubert Fromlet, Kalmar

Now we know that Jair Bolsonaro will be Brazil’s next president. Can he make a positive difference to previous presidents?

What we do know is that right-wing president-elect Bolsonaro has many radical views which are not particularly popular in a European perspective. At the same time there is no doubt that Brazil needs to meet its burdening challenges much more decisively.

Several decades of economic and political muddling through should finally  come to an end. Will “Brazil’s Trump” – as he frequently is called by opponents – be the man to put Brazil on a more favorable track?

Bolsonaro – who is not very skilled in economics – seems to know what the Brazilians really are tired of, i.e. criminality and corruption. However, research also tells us that these kinds of institutional failures and problems are extremely difficult to combat. It remains to be seen whether Bolsonaro will find the appropriate sustainability and means to fight successfully against crime and corruption.

However, this is exactly the main reason why a majority of the Brazilian people voted for him. But his voters also want to see major improvements of the strongly underperforming educational system.

Good education on all levels for a small minority and poor educational conditions for a vast majority has been characterizing the stance of education during many years.

This negative spiral has to broken if Brazil ever can develop into a really future-oriented and successful economy – but also the continuous weak fiscal performance which means a real obstacle to many other necessary structural improvements as well.

One can question whether these objectives can be met by a real hardliner like Bolsonaro without jeopardizing achieved democracy.

In the early days of my professional career in the early 1980s, I was always told that Brazil is the country of the future. Somewhat later when I started visiting Brazil regularly, I heard the same story – and still today but with a more skeptical sound.

Brazil is another example from the international area where heavy protests against insufficient political and economic results these days more strongly come from the right than from the left.

As usual, I am reluctant to spontaneous comments when political changes happen in Latin America. Too often disappointments followed later on.

Hubert Fromlet
Affiliate Professor at the School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University
Editorial board

 

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Det här inlägget postades den October 29th, 2018, 10:06 och fylls under Brazil Emerging markets, generally

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