Electoral Boycott in the second round of the municipal elections in Brazil
The second round of the municipal and mayors elections was held in the places were none of the candidates could achieve the enough votes in the first round. According to the newspaper A Nova Democracia, people who decided to abstain, or to vote blank or null have achieved 3.6 millions, overcome both candidates (3.3 and 2.3 millions respectively) in São Paulo. Also in Porto Velho, 33,6% of the people who are regularized to vote abstain, voted blank or null. This means that there is even more people that did not even care on regularize its vote.
But this is not a particular case of a city: in Brazil, 9.9 million people did not go to the ballots, which have motivated the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) to launch a research to known the reasons. As AND analyzed: “The tendency for the investigation is not to reach any results, since the basis for the growth of the boycott is the rot and crisis of legitimacy of the old order that the elections seek to support.”
No party of the old order is capable of appealing the masses. However, revolutionary slogans are increasingly mobilizing poor people in the favelas and in the countryside. An example of this is the ongoing struggle in the countryside under the slogan of the Agrarian Revolution.
Practical examples of this are the battle of Barro Branco, on which we have previously reported, led by the League of Poor Peasants and which has always denounced bourgeois elections. Also in São Paulo, there was recently a demonstration demanding the Agrarian Revolution.
Boycott actions against the electoral farce were done within the campaign done by different revolutionary activists in Brazil.
In Paraíba, the Support Committee to the Newspaper A Nova Democracia did collages denouncing the electoral farce and calling for boycott. This actions were done mainly in campus João Pessoa in the Federal University of Paraíba.
“Elections are farce! Do not vote, boycott!” Source: AND
In the Complexo do Alemão (a place with a large number of favelas in northern Rio de Janeiro) actions for electoral boycott were also done. A banner that reads “Elections are farce, organize and struggle” was hung and a sell-brigade was there. Additionally, the police violence in the city was severely denounced, discussing the three murdered workers from past week after a police operation, and the war against the poor in the countryside was denounced.
Source: AND
We have published previously on actions during first round:
