Elections 2020: Violence against politicians ‘lost the fear of showing off’ this year, says researcher | Elections 2020

And the 2020 municipal elections are confirming the pattern of previous elections, with at least 25 candidates killed in the electoral period so far in the country, according to political scientist Felipe Borba, a professor at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro ( Unirio). and coordinator of the Electoral Research Group (GIEL) of the university (which periodically publishes bulletins on political and electoral violence on its website).

This number may grow since, according to Borba, “the intensity of electoral violence tends to be greater the closer election day approaches” and the second round will only take place on November 29.

The 25 homicides in this election already exceed the entire 2016 campaign, when 23 candidates were killed. In the 2012 elections there were 16 victims and in 2008, 25.

The problem in general elections is much less, as shown by the figures for 2014 (1 assassinated), 2010 (1), 2006 (1) and 2002 (3).

While noting that the number of candidates killed in this election is for the moment little different numerically from previous ones, Borba makes worrying observations about 2020.

“This year there is more volume (of crimes) and it is more visible. We had some cases of politicians who suffered attacks live, while doing live broadcasts, so it is a violence that has lost its fear of showing itself,” says the professor from Unirio . , who has published several articles on electoral and political violence, and also coordinates research projects on the subject.

One of these cases occurred on Monday (September 11) in Guarulhos (SP), where the candidate for councilor Ricardo Moura (PL) was shot by a hooded man while making a live broadcast on social networks. BBC News Brazil tried to confirm his health, but could not contact the campaign. However, according to a bulletin on the 10th, Moura was hospitalized and doing well. The case is being investigated by the Civil Police.

Already on September 24, Cássio Remis (PSDB), candidate for councilor in Patrocínio (MG), was shot dead in an attack that began while making a live broadcast verbalizing complaints against the City Council. The then secretary of city Works, Jorge Marra, who is also the mayor’s brother, was arrested on charges of the crime.

“Political violence is very open, so you need to have control. And this will only happen if those responsible are punished ”, points out Borba, suggesting the creation of permanent nuclei and police stations specialized in political crimes.

Nowadays, these are usually investigated by the homicide stations of the civil police, which in Brazil are already trying to account for tens of thousands of murders a year. In 2019, 41,635 homicides were registered in the country and, in 2018, 51,558, according to a survey by the G1 news portal.

Felipe Borba maintains that although the number of victims of electoral violence does not exceed dozens in municipal elections, its negative effects on Brazilian democracy are multiplying.

In addition to causing pain to the friends and relatives of the victims, crimes against politicians have an impact on the abandonment of people who could run for office but feel threatened; conducting campaign events in certain locations; and also in the coercion of voters by local powers, such as the militias in Rio de Janeiro. For the current election, the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) has received requests for greater security in more than 500 municipalities in Brazil.

“The creation of specialized police stations is justified because (electoral violence) has a very large impact on the quality of democracy. It interferes in the quality of representation, in the public policies to be decided. It affects the free choice of voters in the offer of candidates and in parliamentary action. We need to give a firm answer to this problem. ”

Another worrying trend already observed in 2020 was the large number of murders of political leaders (politicians in office, former politicians, candidates, pre-candidates, former candidates and public administration employees) in the pre-electoral period, prior to the elections. party conventions, when requests become official. This year, this milestone took place on September 16.

There were 71 murders of political leaders in the pre-electoral period, although Borba and his team did not make this calculation in previous years, the researcher says that it is a “very large” figure. The group uses information on the deaths of candidates in the DivulgaCand system of the Electoral Justice, combined with news published on the Internet on the subject, tracked with alerts that involve around 50 keywords.

This year the number of relatives of politicians murdered is also striking: 20, seven of them during the electoral period.

In addition to the pre-election period, when the motivation for crimes is to prevent opponents from running, and the election period itself, when it comes to preventing a competitor from campaigning, violence can still occur after elections, although this it’s weirder. For this reason, Borba defends “permanent” preventive actions, which consider this entire cycle.

Still, the researcher explains that, in individual cases, it is often difficult to define causality between motivation and crime.

“The most difficult question to answer is whether the crime is politically motivated or not, because there is little information about it. The investigations are confidential and the clarification rate of these crimes is low. If we do not know who the perpetrators of the murders are or the attacks, we do not know what the motivation is: if it is really political or not ”.

Victim profile: men in small municipalities

If there are gaps in individual cases, on the other hand, there are quite evident trends in the set of cases of electoral violence in the country.

An article that analyzed the profile of the candidates killed between 1998 and 2016 showed that 94% of the victims were men, which is partly explained by their greater presence in politics in general.

Also the vast majority, 90% of the crimes, occurred in cities with less than 200,000 voters, where elections have only one round. Municipalities with up to 50,000 voters were responsible for 66% of the homicides.

According to Felipe Borba, the dispute over resources at the local level is at the base of electoral violence in Brazil.

“The 1988 Constitution promoted an unprecedented administrative and political decentralization. The powers and resources granted to local authorities were progressively expanded. Today, in many of the small municipalities, the mayor’s office is the main source of income. Having access to the mayoralty is practically having economic and territorial control over the municipality. ”

And this often goes against illegal activities.

“The presence in these spaces of local political decision-in mayors, municipalities- allows to avoid the approval of certain norms that can hinder the action and increase the costs of criminals who are infiltrating politics,” says the researcher, giving an more. the example of the Rio de Janeiro militias, whose source of income is the construction of buildings in forbidden places, which faces urban zoning, one of the functions of municipal powers.

For this reason, Borba says that violence against politicians is predominantly “alien to ideological issues and debates about public policy,” and is the result of disputes by local authorities.

“Violence in elections varies greatly according to the regional characteristics of the states and municipalities. In Rio de Janeiro, there is the mark of the participation of political actors in organized crime; in Pará, disputes over land ownership; and in other places, of disputes between the local elites “.

In the mapping of murders between 1998 and 2016, violence against politicians was considered a “national phenomenon”, detected in all regions of the country. The southeast and northeast led with 27 homicides each (68% of cases); followed by the Midwest (14%), North (11%) and South (6%).

Assassination of Marielle Franco and violence in the 2018 presidential elections

There are recent episodes that have gained national and even international visibility that escape the predominant profile of violence against politicians studied by the Unirio Electoral Research Group (GIEL).

This is the case of the murder of Marielle Franco, a PSOL councilor in Rio de Janeiro, in 2018.

“She had a parliamentary action against militias in Rio de Janeiro and was sanctioned for that – murdered. It is very clear that, in this case, the motivation for the crime was the victim’s own political action,” says Borba, noting that this investigation, like many others involving politicians, it has yet to be resolved.

And if historically the national elections are not marked by violence like the municipal ones, it was in the 2018 campaign when the then PSL candidate and current president Jair Bolsonaro was stabbed by Adélio Bispo de Oliveira -who, according to Federal Police investigations, he acted alone and without directors.

That year, in March, two buses from the caravan of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) were shot in Paraná, but no one was injured.

“2018 was an atypical year, the first in which we observed violence against national politicians. It was atypical in many ways, and political polarization was one of them. In 2010, the most violent record I remember is the paper ball thrown in la Serra (José Serra, then the PSDB presidential candidate) ”, jokes Felipe Borba, adding that he believes that it is difficult for episodes of violence at the national level to be repeated in 2022.

The researcher says that violence has always been a political instrument in the country and in Latin America; in Mexico and Colombia, in fact, the number of victims and the scale of crimes is considerably higher than in Brazil.

But here, the scene and the actors at play have changed over time.

“In the 60s and 70s, political violence was national and ideological, because it involved state models. They were right-wing dictatorships versus left-wing guerrillas. None of these groups believed in elections as a form of peaceful conflict resolution,” explains the researcher .