Bolsonaro invokes a red scare as polls point to election loss

More than 4,000km and an ideological abyss separate the capitals of Nicaragua and Brazil, where an acrimonious race for the presidency is under way. But the Central American country has found itself at the centre of Brazil’s election debate as its far-right incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, seeks to weaponise Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian crackdown on the Catholic church to attack his leftist challenger, the former me president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Bolsonaro has repeatedly cited d Ortega’s anti-clergy offensive in the run-up to Brazil’s 2 October vote, hoping to convince God-fearing voters Lula’s return to power would result in similar persecution.

Last week Bolsonaro hammered home his message at the UN general assembly, declaring: “I want to announce that Brazil will open its doors to receive the Catholic priests and nuns who have suffered persecution under Nicaragua’s dictatorial regime.”

Experts describe Bolsonaro’s allegation that Lula – a moderate twoterm president from 2003 to 2010 who enjoyed good relations with both Catholic and Protestant leaders – would close churches and jail clergy as ludicrous.

“There is just zero evidence in his governing that he would ever behave like dictators in Nicaragua and Venezuela. I just find it a ridiculous argument,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard University Latin America specialist and the author of How Democracies Die.

“Do these guys really believe that, having lived in Brazil for eight years under Lula, that Lula would suddenly turn Brazil into Nicaragua?” Levitsky wondered. “I think they’re just saying that because they want to legitimise or justify authoritarian behaviour.”

However dubious the claim, it is one Bolsonaro and his allies continue to peddle, primarily in the hope of winning over evangelical voters, who represent almost a third of Brazil’s 156 million-strong electorate.

Bolsonaro’s politician sons, Eduardo and Flávio, have been warning millions of social media followers over the supposed threat of a Nicaragua-style future under Lula. “If Jair Bolsonaro leaves power, Brazil won’t become an Argentina or a Venezuela – it’ll go straight str to Nicaragua,” congressman Eduardo ua tweeted last month.

Flávio, vio a senator for Rio, wrote of o Lula: “Don’t n’t forget, he’s a friend frie of Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega. Have a look on Google to see what he’s been doing to priests and nuns.”

Last week, Silas Malafaia, the radical televangelist who Bolsonaro took to London for the Elizabeth II’s funeral, shared his ally’s offer to shelter Nicaragua’s embattled clerics on Twitter, claiming Nicaragua “was supported by Lula”.

The weaponisation of Nicaragua is a rehash of Bolsonaro’s 2018 campaign, when he used the collapse of Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela to make spurious claims about what might happen were Lula’s Workers’ party (PT) to win power.

Lula has sought to neutralise Bolsonaro’s attacks by distancing himself from Ortega, a revolutionary hero turned authoritarian who has governed continuously since 2007 and secured a fourth consecutive term last year through elections that opponents called a sham.

Ortega’s re-election followed a sixmonth crackdown on Nicaragua’s opposition, which saw all of the former rebel’s main challengers detained or forced into exile.

“It’s been 10 years since I last had contact with Nicaragua. I don’t know what’s happening in Nicaragua. But I’ve heard things aren’t going well there,” Lula said last year, urging Ortega not to “abandon democracy”.

Lula has been facing groundless allegations that he would attack Christianity since the first of his six presidential campaigns in 1989. More than three decades later such scare tactics have been turbo-charged by social media. Together, Bolsonaro and his three sons boast nearly 16 million followers on Twitter and 20 million on Facebook.

So far the scaremongering appears to be failing, however, with Lula launching a charm offensive to reassure Brazilian Christians.

“I don’t think anyone has ever taken such care and ensured the freedom to open churches and practise one’s faith as I did,” Lula told a rally of evangelical supporters earlier this month.

Polls last week suggested support for Lula was actually increasing among Catholic voters, rising from 52% to 53%, according to the pollster Ipec. Evangelicals still preferred Bolsonaro, with 48% of them supporting his presidential bid. But Lula’s evangelical vote share last week rose from 31% to 32%. Overall, the leftist held a lead of around 16 points over Bolsonaro, as this weekend’s election neared.

Religious rupture

Roman Catholicism is Nicaragua’s main religion, but President Daniel Ortega and his wife and vicepresident, Rosario Murillo, have had a complicated relationship with the church for decades. The former guerrilla allied with the church as he sought to regain the presidency in 2007 after a long period out of power. But relations frayed after the church mediated in failed talks during the 2018 uprising, and ruptured when clerics denounced the bloody crackdown that claimed about 350 lives.