Bishop, gospel singer, and engineer Marcelo Crivella, was elected Sunday as a representative (called a “Deputy”) for Rio de Janeiro to the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies that functions like the U.S. House of Representatives.
The newly elected leader had made a rapid rise to the mayorship for Rio on Sunday, October 30th, 2016. only to lose popular support. Now, he has made a comeback as part of a conservative wave in the elections for the Federal Assembly and lower offices. He supported the re-election of current Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
The president himself stunned Brazilian intelligentsia and pollsters who had written off the Trump-like figure. Despite predictions that Bolsinaro would lose in a landslide to leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the incumbent marshaled forces, including many evangelical Brazilians, to end up in a runoff election at the end of this month. U.K.-based Economist magazine’s coverage of the president was typical of many in the media in Brazil and around the world. It dismissed Bolsonaro’s “dwindling group of supporters” with a hit piece masquerading as news analysis. Bolsonaro charges that he overcame the lies of the pundits and pollsters and will win in the runoff. It is probably a toss-up but the results of the first round have sent the leftists into psychological crisis.
They believed the polls and their hopes so much that they are now experiencing extreme psychological dislocation, what social psychologists called “cognitive dissonance.” The Guardian newspaper quoted one Brazilian analyst, ” I went to Lula’s rally, and people were crying, or in a state of shock.” There are reports of extreme bitterness and despair among leftist voters. An unhinged man stabbed Bolsonaro in the stomach in his first winning campaign for President. Bolsonaro believes that his enemies caused the man to be acquitted as mentally insane and eligible for release back into society. Such a mood can create apocalyptic feelings on both sides, even though the upcoming runoff is probably a toss-up.
The same psychological dissonance happened after Trump’s election. Crivella was a former supporter of “Lula,” as the former president is known, but switched his support to Bolsonaro several years ago. He and other Bolsonaro allies took a strong majority of the Senate seats and made a strong showing in the House of Deputies.
Crivella lost a re-election bid as mayor in 2020. The city did not fare well in the pandemic and was economically exhausted. Crivella also got into several battles with the LGTB community. After his arrest, a loan shark claimed that he could deliver corruption charges against Crivella. The ex-mayor was arrested briefly, and the charges have gone nowhere. Crivella claims that the judicial system is riven with political biases, something that his old ally, now opponent, Lula also claims. On 10 July 2022, city guard Marcelo Aloizio de Arruda, an activist supporter of Lula, was murdered for political reasons. Bolsonaro has used harsh attacks against his foes. The newly elected Crivella says he will devote himself to cleaning up the judiciary.
Election as mayor in 2016 was a benchmark of evangelical/Pentecostal involvement in the public square.
In 2016 Crivella pulled off a stunning win in 2016 for the mayorship of Rio de Janeiro with almost 60% of the vote in a runoff election. He easily fended off his Socialist challenger by twenty percentage points. The winning candidate said when received the results, “I thank God for winning this election, and the certainty that He will be with me and beside my companions who will rule with me.”
Voter disgust was rampant following a corruption scandal that swept former President Dilma Rousseff from power in 2016 and tarnished all of the major parties. In Rio, poor and working-class voters supported Crivella for his promises to protect their families from crime, invest in health care for the poor, and improve shoddy city services left bankrupt by the Olympic spending. He also promised to create public-private partnerships to enroll 50% of Rio’s young children into pre-school by 2020.
The race for mayor featured two candidates who took diametrical views on Israel. A year ago, Crivella’s opponent burned an Israeli flag while denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres as “an ideologue for terrorism.” According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Crivella, a notable supporter of the State of Israel, rallied supporters through radio and newspapers to join in a rally to support Israel. Jewish areas of the city gave Crivella strong support at the ballot box. There are about 150,000 Jews in Rio.
The new mayor ran as a Brazilian Republican under the slogan, “The time has come to take care of the people.”
He is the son of Catholic parents, attended a Methodist church as a child, and joined the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, which preaches a “prosperity gospel.” For ten years, he was a missionary in Africa and became a bishop for the church. The church has become one of Brazil’s largest Pentecostal denominations and has several churches in New York City. As an engineer, Crivella helped to construct over seventy-five churches. He is well-known for writing and singing gospel hymns. In 1999, he released his popular, “The Reason of my life.”
However, the new mayor played down his connections to the Universal Church and dismissed his early writings that attacked the Catholic church as the product of his “immature zeal” as a young missionary. Utilizing a jingle promising the separation of church and state, Crivella said that he would not eliminate city financing for the Gay Parade and Carnival. He also promised that he would not tolerate any kind of persecution of religions of African origin. He told the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, “If there is any religious prejudice, it will disappear in my administration.”
Right after his election, the mayor-elect went on an unofficial visit to Israel, but his office says that he would discuss security issues with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat. The incoming mayor for Rio de Janeiro promised to better engage the city’s Municipal Guard through community policing.
According to the Brazilian Census, evangelicals number make up over 24% of the population and are growing fast. Increasingly, the evangelicals are taking a central role in Brazilian politics. Crivella became a senator in 2002. Evangelicals provided critical support in the narrow election of President Dilma Rousseff in 2014, so their disenchantment was critical to the success of her enemies to impeach her from office in 2016.
Crivella and fellow evangelicals founded the Brazilian Republican Party in 2005. During the 2016 municipal elections, the party had the greatest increase in vote share among all the parties. This year three republicans won office as representatives of Rio de Janeiro to the Federal Assembly.
In 2016, some of the questions surrounding Crivella as mayor were, Will he be an effective manager? How will he deal with the inevitable disasters — man-made and natural — that will strike the city? Can he really cut through the corruption of the city contract processes? Will he be a mayor for all of the city and not punish other religions? Can he nimbly make his way through the extreme factionalism of local politics? He was hobbled by the pandemic and inept management. It seems that enough of the city voters were willing to give him a second chance. How will he answer these questions as a representative in the Federal assembly?
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