By Fabio Teixeira
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, Thurs. Aug 27, 2020 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Black political candidates in Brazil must get a fair share of air time and public funding, the top electoral court has ruled in a decision set to change the face of elections.
“There are times in life when everyone needs to choose which side of history they want to be on. Today, we affirm that we are on the side of those who fight racism,” Luis Roberto Barroso, president of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, said in a statement following Tuesday night’s ruling.
The new rules will take effect at the 2022 national elections and aim to ensure the nation’s powerful political elite looks more like the population at large.
“Excellent news for Black candidatures all over the country,” Benedita da Silva, a Black congresswoman from Brazil’s Worker’s Party and a key driver of the change, said on Twitter.
While Brazil is a diverse country, Congress does not reflect the population at large. Blacks and mixed race Brazilians make up almost 55% of the population, but less than a quarter of the lower house of Congress, government data shows.
Brazil’s population is 51% female, but only about 15% of members of the lower house are women.
“Financing is a determining factor for elections,” said Wescrey Portes, a researcher on race and politics for UERJ, Rio’s state university.
“We expect things to improve, but (money) is not the only thing that determines success (at elections).”
Portes said the impact would vary widely from party to party, as some smaller parties field mostly Black candidates while bigger parties usually offer a majority white team.
In Brazil, Black people tend to live, study and earn less than whites, according to government statistics. Blacks make up 64% of the unemployed, and are almost three times as likely to be victims of homicide, data from 2019 showed.
NEW SYSTEM
In Brazil, elections are partly publicly funded, with parties granted money as well as free TV and radio time to run their campaigns.
In general, parties decide how to allocate those resources – and that has not delivered equal gains for all candidates.
When it comes to women, Brazil operates a quota system under which at least 30% of the candidates should be female.
But the quota did not boost female representation as hoped, since men still got most of the funding and air time.
Under the new rules, if a party presents 100 candidates for Congress of whom 20 are Black, the 20 would be entitled to one fifth of the available funds and air time to make their case.
Tuesday’s ruling stems from a 2018 decision when the top electoral court said women should get an equal proportion of money and air time as their male counterparts.
Congresswoman da Silva then asked the court whether a portion of the incentives for female candidates could be reserved specifically for Black women who run for office.
While the court did not fully grant her request, it ruled by six to one to extend the funding and air time rule to Blacks, seeking to level the playing field across race and gender lines.
(Reporting by Fabio Teixeira @ffctt; Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths.
