OPINION | Lula in Brazil and the loneliness of the intolerant

Credit: Rodrigo Paiva/Getty Images Editor’s Note: Jorge Dávila Miguel has a degree in Journalism since 1973 and has maintained a continuous career in his profession to date. He has postgraduate degrees in Social Information Sciences and Social Media, as well as postgraduate studies in International Relations, Political Economy and Latin American History. Dávila Miguel is a columnist for El Nuevo Herald on the McClatchy network, and a political analyst and columnist for CNN en Español. The comments expressed in this column belong exclusively to the author. See more at cnne.com/opinion (CNN Spanish) — Brazil’s presidential fight went into its second chapter as soon as the vote count ended on Sunday, March 2. Neither Jair Bolsonaro nor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva obtained more than 50% of the votes. Therefore, there is a second round on October 30.
As usual, the two declared victory. Bolsonaro because he had surpassed what the polls had predicted and Lula because “I have never won in the first round.” The only “objective”, a term not very popular these days, is that Lula da Silva beat her rival, called the “extreme right”, by more than six million votes. It is now necessary to reach October 30. Both Lula and Bolsonaro must be busy getting the support of other minority parties that totaled 8.7% of the votes cast, and encouraging new voters. In these elections, 32,770,982 (i) voters who may be encouraged to vote did not vote. But that almost 20% of people who did not vote, more than 80% belong to middle and upper-middle class neighborhoods, who only vote in extreme situations, as it should be for them if the left wins in Brazil. Most likely. Simone Tebet, of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), the third place in the elections, which obtained almost five million voters, has already declared that she supports Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Like Ciro Gomes of the Democratic Labor Party (PDT), fourth place, who obtained more than three million votes, has also given his support to Lula da Silva. Naturally, the pools will continue until the day of the final election. Who will win, the left or the right? Although everything seems to indicate that it will be Lula, the left, who, to his advantage of more than six million votes on October 2, would now add eight and a half million ballots if the followers of Tebet and Gomes are disciplined Brazilians and pay attention to their leaders to support Lula. A victory for Lula Da Silva would have radical repercussions in the Latin American political theater. It would be the tenth electoral victory of the left -with all its nuances- in the region, after Pedro Castillo, in Peru (2017); Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in Mexico (2018); Alberto Fernández, in Argentina (2019); Nayib Bukele, in El Salvador (2019) (ii); Luis Abinader, in the Dominican Republic (2020); Gabriel Boric, in Chile (2021); Xiomara Castro, in Honduras (2022); and Gustavo Petro, in Colombia (2022). Some of them have evolved and their positions do not seem leftist. It resembles the “pink tide” in the region around 2014, which according to President Obama changed his perception of the Cuba-US dispute. Will the case be repeated? Bourgeois and proletarians think alike In the drastic polarization that is growing in the world, the right dreams of the elimination of the left and the left dreams of the elimination of the right. Why are they needed on the planet? Each of them wonders intrigued about “the others”. The question is real, objective and can even be heard expressed verbally with all its words, as soon as the silly exhibitor on duty gains confidence. “They are useless, we have to eliminate them.” The answer is as old as human history: the obvious need for the limit. What can we really want that is not limited? Unlimited happiness? It would require that our existence, nor that of the people we love, also have no limit, and that happiness must also be limitless, just like the eternal existence of all the people we love and who in turn love those other people. It was the influential Canadian demographer Nathan Keyfitz, who came up with the idea of ​​calculating what the total population of the world has been in all its years of existence. He started from a totally scientific fact, indisputable. He started his calculation with two people: Adam and Eve. In the end Keyfitz, after countless calculations and notes, came to the conclusion that until the year 2017, I don’t remember the date and time he chose to end his account, there had been in the world, for sure, 108,470,690,115 people . The Boundless Demographer wanted to be especially forceful with this figure. He had died in 2010 but left his calculations until 2050. He is not known to have calculated that we would not fit on this planet if no one had died because of “happiness without limits”. This thematic diversion serves to return to the issue of those who do not understand why their opponents, right or left, continue to live on planet Earth. Very simple: because then they would not continue on this planet either. What defines us and what identifies us as political animals are our ideas and those of those who disagree with us. If the other does not exist, we cannot exist. We can have power without limits, which is what this intolerant right or left wants. But at that moment, like Stalin, Hitler or Caligula, we are totally alone, left to ourselves. Because we had no limits. Yo . 156,454,011 registered voters, of which only 123,682,372 million voted. ii. That calls itself leftist