Victory for society

By Helena Chagas, for the blog The Divergent e Journalists for Democracy

The postponement of the ENEM exams, which were scheduled for November, showed that Jair Bolsonaro chickened out in the face of Congress, but it was, above all, a victory for Brazilian society. Entities in the sector, ranging from the UNE and Ubes student unions to think tanks like Todos pela Educação (All for Education), managed to mobilize politicians around the basic argument that maintaining the exam date would harm the poorest students, who lack computers or other resources to study at home during the pandemic.

The Speaker of the House, Rodrigo Maia, then used the rapprochement meeting with Bolsonaro last week to make the request directly. The president agreed. The Minister of Education, Abraham Weintraub, and the "ideologues" who supported his shameful statement that the ENEM (National High School Exam) is not there to be an instrument for correcting inequalities, were left empty-handed.

Bolsonaro blinked – and it's very good that he backed down on this item in his march towards folly. It doesn't mean he'll do it again, or in cases like chloroquine and social isolation, for example. But it shows that the balance of power may be beginning to show signs of change. In the case of the ENEM (National High School Exam), society realized that it's possible to organize around real-life issues, politicians realized they need to connect with them, and Bolsonaro may have realized – if he read the latest polls – that he's not all that popular.