Brazil

國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

5.1.2 Bolivia

In 2019, Bolivians participated in general elections amid widespread outrage over because of the Supreme Court of Justice gave Morales the green light to run for a fourth straight term after overruling the Constitution and scrapping term limits for every office (Blair 2017).

Before this election, as a result of the referendum held in February 2016, Bolivians rejected a constitutional amendment that would have allowed Morales to run for another term in the 2019 presidential elections (BBC News 2016a); however, such result was not respected by him, as feared.

In response, rallies, protests, marches, and other expressions of popular resistance from citizens were seen in the Bolivian streets as "Resistance against the dictatorship" (BBC News 2019a). During that electoral process, voters responded to calls by the opposition to cast invalid ballots to protest Morales (Sanchez Berzain 2019). Likewise, public opinion polls revealed that 11 percent of Bolivians were willing to null or blank their votes in the first round (La Voz 2019)

After published results, with a narrow win of 47.07% for Evo Morales (Collyns 2019) and around 5% to invalid votes, Bolivians erupted in violent protests in several cities when the main opposition candidate, Carlos Mesa, rejected electoral results (BBC News 2019b). Carlos Mesa, former Bolivian president, denounced that general results released by election authorities were a "fraud," accusing Evo Morales of colluding with the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to tweak delayed results and avoid a run-off (Agence France-Presse 2019).

5.1.3 Brazil

Corruption was the central theme of Brazilian's 2006 general elections where accusations of bribery and use of undisclosed funds for campaign expenditures involved top party and governing officials in one of the most famous cases called the Mensalão or Big Monthly Stipend (Rennó 2008). This great corruption scandal involved directly with the president of the Workers' Party (PT), Ricardo Berzoini, and the PT candidate for the São Paulo government, Aloísio Mercadante (Rennó 2007), as well as Oswaldo Bargas, manager of the Lula campaign; and Jorge Lorenzetti, risk and media analyst of the Lula campaign (Fundação Perseus Abramo 2006).

‧

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

Since then, groups and influential individuals leaded campaigns to encourage protest voting. Some campaigns sprung up on the mass media as the commercial produced by MTV, of the Abril Group, that qualified the electoral campaign on TV as "useless and lying" (Weissheimer 2006). Meanwhile, the popular website of political and social issues called Centro de Mídia Independente (CMI) allowed internauts to discuss on mobilizations of both blank and null voting (Segurado 2009). Also, through Twitter, Facebook, or the popular Orkut site (in Brazil), voters were informed on how to spoil their ballots during elections (Guerreiro 2006).

Moreover, Dinho Ouro Preto, one of Brazil's best-known artists, encouraged citizens to annul their votes to protest the current generation of politicians, saying that "I see so much frustration and I think that annulling the vote is an expression of that. It would be good for Brazilian democracy (for them) to see the dimension of dissatisfaction" (Downie 2006). Although charges of corruption plagued the 2006 general election, Brazilian voters headed to the polls twice (for the first and second round) to choose, in landslide re-election victory in a run-off vote, to Lula da Silva (Rohter 2006). Although the invalid votes rate was not as high as last year, Rennó's study (2007) suggested that those electors who preferred to spoil their ballots were influenced by multiple corruption scandals from the Lula da Silva's Workers' Party.

Political disappointment arose during the Brazilian's 2010 general elections after accusations of corruption in the Worker’s Party that shook Dilma Rousseff’s campaign.

Allegations were published in Veja magazine that Israel Guerra, the son of Lula’s chief of staff Erenice Guerra, had asked money from companies to arrange government contracts and loans which ended up with the Guerra's resignation (Council on Hemispheric Affairs 2010). Although Rousseff was not directly related to the corruption scandal, Serra's campaign played the guilt by association card Guerra-Rousseff (Elizondo 2010).

In reaction to such events, there was a flood of campaigns promoted the annulment of voting, particularly in the runoff between Dilma Rousseff and José Serra. In this regard, the ex-presidential candidate for the Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (Party for Socialism and Freedom), Plínio de Arruda Sampaio, declared his preference for the null vote as the only correct position at this time (Carvalho 2010). In words of Plínio, "I propose a null vote because I believe that what

‧

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

is important in the electoral campaign on the left is conscience. And in this case, I need to inform the mass that none of the candidates provides a solution under any circumstances" (Rossi 2010).

Adding, "I'm going to vote null, me and many of us here. I will give the null vote in respect of those who voted for me. For those who voted for me, I will say: my vote will be null" (Pasini 2010). Throughout his invalid vote campaign, in the runoff, Plínio de Arruda hammered ruling party candidate Dilma Rousseff and the other candidate José Serra, however, he failed to land any decisive blows because of Rousseff led ahead of the runoff vote.

A massive corruption scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras took the 2014 general elections. An investigation called Operation Car Wash evidenced that Brazil's biggest construction firms overcharged Petrobras for building contracts and that, part of their windfall was delivered to Petrobras executives and politicians who were involved in it (BBC News 2016b). Likewise, BBC News (2006b) added that prosecutors alleged that Rousseff's Workers' Party partly financed its campaigns with kickbacks and that some of her high-ranking politicians had been convicted over the scandal while Rousseff denied had been implicated in it. In this context, the company's former director of refining and supply, Paulo Roberto Costa, stated that there was an institutionalized bribery system in Petrobras, the Brazilian state-controlled oil company and that the Workers' Party had pocketed between 1% and 3% of all contracts (Jimenez 2014).

Voters dissatisfied and disillusioned with the political landscape launched null vote campaigns on social media in protest against the elections (Vitor 2014). The president of the Regional Electoral Court of Paraná, Edson Vidal Pinto, called "desserviço" those internet campaigns in favor of the null vote which he sees as a form of protest voting capable of influencing the outcome of the elections (Gonçalves 2014). Maria Cristina Fernandes, the political editor of the newspaper Valor, expressed that campaign for the Null or blank voting is an interesting phenomenon, increased by the June 2013's demonstrations (Nogueira da Costa 2014) where null vote was encouraged as a protest against current government and politicians (Roberto 2013). As a result of the 2010 presidential elections in the first round, the percentage of invalid votes was higher than in past elections, which would probably reveal a disinterest of the population for politics, according to Agência Brasil (2014).

‧

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

Several corruption scandals such as Operation Car Wash, Petrobras y Odebrecht, the impeachment in 2016 of ex-President Dilma Rousseff, severe allegations of bribery against Michel Temer, the conviction of Lula Da Silva on corruption and money laundering charges, and others overshadowed Brazil and the general elections in 2018 (BBC News 2018).

In this context, Brazilian's 2018 general elections showed a high rate of voter dissatisfaction who turned to the blank or null ballot papers as a signal of protest with the regime (Dearo 2018). As in previous elections, the invalid vote campaigns were promoted through social networks (Santos 2018) that even the government stated that, on election day, voters' campaigns for the null or blank vote would be subject to punishment as well as any different propaganda (ClickPB 2018). Likewise, around Brazil, there were various mobilizations in supporting the null vote like Rede Libertária da Baixada Santista in Santos, the Local Anarchist Front in Curitiba as well as other groups in Tatuí, Salvador, Porto Alegre, São Paulo, Fortaleza, Pelotas among countless other cities, as manifested by the Agência de Notícias Anarquistas (2018). At the end of the runoff, the percentage of invalid votes was high with an increase of 60% over the last election (Grandin et al. 2018).