AND: Editorial – The Message of Abstention

We share an unofficial translation of the Editorial from A Nova Democracia.

The election for mayors and city council members confirmed – across both rounds – once again two facts: first, that the big landlord right, the social base of Bolsonarism and fascism as a political and social phenomenon, has gained the means it desired to compete in 2026; second, that electoral boycott – abstentions, blank votes, null votes, and those eligible to vote who did not register or who remain with their voter registration canceled – is a confirmed and reaffirmed trend, despite the fluctuations of circumstantial disputes and the false polarization artificially presented as the main contradiction of the national political crisis.

The electoral boycott has caused astonishment among the so-called experts of our official politics and even panic among our “guardians of democracy”. The explanations from the Minister of the Superior Electoral Court, Carmén Lúcia, regarding this fact are almost hilarious – instead of naive, as it may seem, since naivety is something that the minister of the high bureaucracy of the old State cannot be accused of. However, it is curious to see such astonishment, as it is a fact that, over decades, an average of one-third of eligible citizens simply abstain from voting, even with the obligation to vote and the systematic and permanent campaign, almost daily, to beautify the putrid electoral system and convince our people that voting is their weapon to improve their lives. The same disconcerted effort is made by media monopolies and polling companies (now, one or two of these have started to include in their surveys citizens who declare they will abstain, something never taken into accountv before). In Ribeirão Preto, for example, the abstention was record , it was of 37.6% of registered voters, not considering null, blank, and unregistered votes or optional voters. In several cases, the percentage of abstention was higher than the votes for the second candidate, and in others, it was higher than that of the “winner.” But to get straight to the point, let us consider the results from the São Paulo, the largest city of the country.

In this megalopolis – which was, in many ways, the epicenter of the dispute over this so-called false polarization, with Guilherme Boulos and Ricardo Nunes – the total number of abstentions plus blank and null votes, as mentioned above, surpassed that of the leading candidate in the second round; and it is noted that Boulos’s defeat is a major symptom of the failure of opportunism. The legitimacy of the winner – already questionable in normal situations, as the second-round vote is a forced choice due to rejection – is in tatters. It is the old bureaucratic democracy in terminal crisis in this historical cycle, as it is not only incapable of presenting itself to the masses as an alternative but also to the reactionaries themselves. Therefore, of those who annulled their votes, about 20,000 did so by putting down the number of Pablo Marçal. This act can be seen as a protest manifestation by voters of the emerging far-right, but this fact has no connection to the high number of abstentions and only proves the thesis that the current political system has completely gone bankrupt. The situation of demoralization is such that even the counter-revolution and its opportunistic allies have been forced to recognize the weight of the electoral boycott and can no longer deny it, as they did for decades. The polling companies and media monopolies themselves must acknowledge this fact, which more accurately reflects the political reality of the country: the increasing boycott of the electoral farce, instead of shamelessly denying it and trying to hide it with various excuses and lies, as they are skilled at doing in this infamous business.

The main factor, however, is that the vast majority of non-voters increasingly recognize, often spontaneously and in many cases still as a budding revolutionary consciousness, that these elections only serve to legitimize, every two years, the age-old system of exploitation and oppression by the same “powerful” elites – the big bourgeoisie and big landlords who are lackeys of foreign powers, especially the North-American superpower – who together oppress our people, drain their resources, subjugate the nation, and plunder its natural wealth; to legitimize a corrupt and corrupting political system that ensures a good life for a large layer of privileged opportunists, whether they are in parliament, bureaucrats in the judiciary, or technocrats in the executive, all under the tutelage of the Armed Forces through the blackmail and coup threats from their privileged generals and colonels.

This political fact is called the boycott of the electoral farce! And its cause and reason have nothing to do with the explanations that the deniers of its existence until now are now forced to provide. The causes and reasons are various, and they all share the common act of refusing to legitimize this horrific system, the rejection, the repulsion, and even the simple and pure indifference to it. All of these are political attitudes shaped by each individual’s perspective and consciousness, but among them, there is a growing opposition and search for a truly possible path to dismantle this old order. What is lacking is the elevation of their mobilization, piece by piece, in the class struggle, to achieve proletarian and revolutionary consciousness, including understanding the role that the far-right plays with its filthy, anti-communist rhetoric and its false “anti-system” claims and saviors of the homeland, in order to confront, combat, and defeat it – not at the polls of the electoral farce –which, in any case, does not signify any real defeat – but in the battlefield for the trampled and denied rights and in defense of the democratic freedoms of the Brazilian people. But this is a problem for revolutionaries, where the combative actions of the masses must truly polarize the Agrarian Revolution as the base of a Democratic Revolution of new type against the reaction, whether they are fascists or ultra-reactionaries; only in this way, workers or common small property owners, feeling powerless under the old bourgeois democracy that makes fools of them, and enraged by so many injustices, will know how to channel their rightful anger towards the revolutionary path, and not towards the path of fascism.

On the other hand, the results of these municipal elections also prove that the old and outdated bureaucratic bourgeois democracy is in the hands of the same people as always: the right-wing parasites of the “centers” – that is, all big landlords. The PSD won five capitals, including Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, and Curitiba; União Brasil won four, two of them in the Northeast (Salvador and Natal); and Bolsonaro’s PL won another four (two of them, Aracaju and Maceió, in the Northeast). The PT, which should have performed better – in theory – due to being largely in control of the federal Executive “machine”, only won one capital: Fortaleza, that is, the PT of Cid Gomes. However, the result is entirely logical: the one who truly possesses the machine is Arthur Lira, after having seized the PT government, which is why he was the big winner of the elections, along with the “ruralist bench” of the most abject big landlords. There is no doubt that this entire “machine” will be used to elect the candidate who can combine the police reactionism and anti-people stance of Bolsonarism with “parliamentary pragmatism” for the benefit of the “center”, whether it is Tarcísio de Freitas (Bolsonaro’s preferred candidate) or Ronaldo Caiado (who is running from the outside, even clashing with Bolsonaro). Yes, once again: Luiz Inácio, with his policy of conciliation, is contributing to the “return of Bolsonarism” or a similar movement to the presidency in the country.

It is true that the Bolsonarist right and other big landlord forces – which are seeking a coalition for 2026 – do not face resistance in the official political arena, given the survival policy of ‘governability’ at any cost and the cowardice of the false left government in confronting them, feeling intimidated by the tutelage of the generals; the situation is different in the realm of mass struggle. After the armed confrontation that left the Bolsonarist State president of “Invasão Zero” injured along with four other paramilitaries, the peasants – organized by the League of Poor Peasants – have seized a new part of the latifundium. It is in this arena where the far-right can and is being defeated, not at the polls, which have proven to be a driving force for reaction, but in the class struggle.

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The unfolding of the political situation, after the election, will inevitably lead to a big landlord offensive against the poor peasants – who have become the first and main trench of resistance to armed Bolsonarism, as they increase their disciplined organization and preparation for these confrontations day by day. It is necessary to support and vigorously promote the revolutionary struggle of the poor peasants and aspire for it to make new and greater leaps: the very defense of democratic freedoms, in the countryside and in the city, depends on the strengthening and growth of the rural revolutionary movement, where it can quickly demonstrate the full force of the Revolution in Brazil and educate, through political facts and true polarization, all democratic public opinion and the popular masses in the resistance struggles in the cities to not reconcile with the class enemy and not believe in the deceivers of all kinds who invite retreat, nor allow themselves to be dragged into the swamp of electoral farce, but rather to combat them relentlessly.