Corrupto?

You may have seen this week’s meme in Brazil, where people write self-descriptions on their hands. The origin of the trend was Flavio Bolsonaro (a far right-wing presidential candidate), who led the poll in the first round of Brazil’s current election. He wrote ‘corrupto’ on his own hand and showed it in a presidential TV debate.

Why would someone do that? Because Bolsonaro’s idea was to point at his left-wing opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula del Silva (Lula), implying that Lula is corrupt. However, the stunt backfired as many of the programme’s millions of viewers sarcastically took Bolsonaro’s hand-written message as an admission of his own guilt. Bolsonaro’s personal and family legacy are legendary. He is the son of the jailed former president Jair Bolosonaro who has long faced corruption accusations, although he denies them and has never been convicted. Jair Bolsonaro was imprisoned for leading a conspiracy to overturn his 2022 election loss to Lula. Jair was in power during COVID, when 716,000 Brazilians died because the Bolsonaro didn’t believe in any risk and blocked coordinated responses.

Flavio Bolsonara has well-documented ties to Rio’s mafia underworld and has employed relatives of the city’s most notorious contract killer. He is currently being investigated by the federal police as part of a money-laundering inquiry.

The decision between Bolsonaro and Lula will be made tomorrow when Brazilians go to the second round of the presidential poll. In the first round, no candidate had more than 50% of the votes; Bolsonaro led with 47.03%, Lula had 45.15% (4 other candidates shared the remaining 8%). Therefore a second round will take place where people choose between the two candidates who polled the highest.

Brazil’s election is yet another of the many recent global elections where a populist, strongly right-wing candidate is facing off against a left-wing opponent. Trump is actively supporting the right wing in South America, including in Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Ecuador, Argentina and Peru which all currently have right-wing leaders. Trump went a step further in Venezuela by removing Maduro, who was far left.

The appeal of the right wing for voters is economic reform and physical security; many South American countries experienced rising inflation and increased organised crime through the early 2020s when they had left wing governments. While there’s plenty of evidence current inflation is a globally-driven phenomenon that no individual government can solve, that’s not what most voters choose to think, including in New Zealand.

Not to mention that times of instability drive people to seek the promise of security, whether that promise is genuine or valid – the ‘strong man’ leader phenomenon where leaders seek to bypass institutional constraints and centralise authority. It’s my all time least favourite aspect of our current government, that they say they want to minimise central government while conversely increasing its power and weakening the power of local government.

Back to the ‘description on hand’ meme, I had to think about what I would choose. I decided two hands gave me a better spread. ‘Música’ came up the top because I’m practising my set every day for my Menagerie gigs and we went to an excellent concert by the NZSO last night including Haydn’s most famous cello concerto. Chris suggested ‘jardiniera’ (gardener) because cultivation and growing is central to much of what I do – not only in reference to plants. Of interest in my thought process, ‘científica’ didn’t make the cut. While for much of my life I have thought of myself as a scientist first and foremost, it’s becoming less important.

I still love working with scientists and hearing about their new ideas. However, I no longer believe in science and technology driving our economy, or indeed ‘saving’ us from humanity’s current perils. Science and technology is creating perils faster than it is solving them; maybe it always has. My vote is now for the humanities, although the current government would 100% disagree with me, given how it has reduced funding to humanities research and arts. Humane behaviour – ‘compassionate, sympathetic, and generous behavior’ towards each other and the planet – is what we are most in need of. I have written about this in quite a few blogs including ‘Where’s the humanity?’, ‘Has science sold out‘?, and ‘Creating connections‘.

[Side note: Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy for peace missions (also billionaire real estate mogul and friend of Trump), is all about humanitarian actions. “You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian,” he said to Vladimir Putin in a recent meeting. “You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that. I commend you.” Hmmm…maybe I’m not thinking about that type of humanitarian.]

So where does my interest in humanity and arts, leave me in my choices in New Zealand’s upcoming election?

• The Green Party promises to invest in arts, creativity and culture.
• Labour has policies on protecting public funding for arts and culture and recognising the wellbeing value of creativity.
• Te Pāti Māori specifically focuses on supporting Māori cultural practice and arts.
• Opportunity wants arts and culture embedded in health, education and justice rather than treating it as a specific funding category. It has no specific arts policy.
• National does not have any specific commitment to arts funding.
• NZ First doesn’t have a relevant policy.
• ACT says it will remove the $100,000 cap on charitable donations to encourage philanthropic support for arts but has explicitly declined committing to increased baseline funding for Creative NZ, or additional taxpayer funding for the arts.

That’s helping me narrow down which boxes I will tick in the next two weeks…