The Brazilian democracy faced a big test during its Oct-22 elections‚ when Jair Bolsonaro spread wrong info about vote counting (similar to what happened in US with Trump). The scary part was that some military leaders backed these ideas; which made things worse
About 2 years ago after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won by a small margin his supporters blocked roads and asked military to step-in. Then on Jan-8 they broke into main government buildings — just like the US Capitol attack. The militaryʼs role wasnt clear that day but some high-rank officers might have helped the attackers
- Fast electronic vote counting that left no room for fake news
- Courts quick action to ban Bolsonaro from running till 2030
- Strong steps to stop wrong info on social-media
- Smart political moves between different parties
- Brazilʼs special way of making parties work together
The system works in a special way: the president needs to work with many different parties in Congress — its not perfect and sometimes leads to deal-making but it helps keep things calm. For example some people from Bolsonaroʼs party now support Lulaʼs ideas
Right now Lula and São Paulo Gov Tarcísio de Freitas (who used to be with Bolsonaro) work together well: they meet in public and try to make politics less angry. Even though local politics still has some problems with about 187 cases of fighting in early-24 the big picture looks much better
Different groups helped fix things too. News companies checked facts; religious leaders asked for peace; business people wanted stable politics. More than 1 million people signed a letter to protect democracy which shows how many wanted things to get better