Dressed in a navy blue shirt, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro decided to shut down, at least a little, Pandora’s box that was opened last Sunday By not admitting his electoral defeat for more than 48 hours.
The long wait, and the constant upheaval over the past few months, was understood as a mandate for its extremist bases to erect more than 800 roadblocks – burning trucks, cars and tyres.
Protesting in another way is part of our democracy.”
“Do not think bad,” said the defeated chief, “(…) I am with you.” “But we will open the roads,” Bolsonaro added. Then he added, “Protest in another way. It’s part of our democracy.”
In fact, the last tactic in President Trump’s destabilization strategy had already been abandoned before the announcement. Several conservatives, as well as the chief justice of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, Alexandre de Moraes, have succeeded in intimidating truck drivers and persuading the highway police – which are infiltrated by the Bolsonarios – to act even more forcefully. This Thursday afternoon, in Brazil, there are only about 80 buildings left.
Those who oppose the outcome with criminal movements will fight with all the weight of the law.”
“The elections ended democratically on Sunday,” Moraes said at a conference this Thursday in Brasilia. 124 million Brazilians voted – he explained – and the result was quickly given in just two hours, evidence of the effectiveness of the electronic voting system that Bolsonaro has been questioning for months. The overwhelming majority of voters accept the result democratically. He said that those who respond to it with criminal movements will fight with all the weight of the law.
Moraes earned points last year for his aggressive defense of the rule of law. But, as Wednesday’s large Bolsonarista demonstrations made clear, many people do not accept the result and consider Moraes himself a dictator.
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Bolsonaro’s ambiguity in the demonstrations was interpreted as a green light. The president made it very clear. “He will not admit that the thief is gaining power,” Bolsonarista said in Rio, referring to Lula. As with the Trumpists who stormed the Capitol in Washington in January 2021, there is an air of the stage for a Bolsonaro protest. Wearing a green and yellow wig and Neymar shirt, this protester was smiling as he called for military intervention.
This Thursday afternoon, when Bolsonaro hit the brakes, there were only 80 hurdles left for the truck drivers.
Beyond the fevered imaginations of Bolsonarist followers – and some foreign journalists – the possibility of a coup is nil. columnist or a balloon Bela Miguel quoted interlocutors from the Labor Party who had consulted the military before the elections. The message: “We will respect the election results but don’t count on us to support Lula’s campaign.” The old rule in Latin America is that support for Washington’s coup is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a coup, and Joe Biden deals poorly with Bolsonaro. After speaking with Lula on Wednesday, the US President announced yesterday that he will be sending Vice President Kamala Harris to Lula’s inauguration on January 1.
To add a dose of telenovela to the stage, star actress Kasia Kiss, who plays the manipulative CEO of the new telenovela TransitThey knelt with a rosary while protesting the coup in Rio and prayed that Lula would not be president. “If they have Che Guevara, we have Roberto Jefferson,” another Rio protester said, referring to the former deputy who fired two grenades at the federal police last week.
Joe Biden has announced that his Vice President, Kamala Harris, will attend Lula’s inauguration
So that there is no shortage of football, left-wing fans of clubs like Corinthians have formed shock groups to break up barriers chanting “Truckers beware!” There were few violent incidents, although several Bolsonaro protesters were run over at a roadblock.
The number of Brazilians who share Lula’s mistrust should not be underestimated. “The siege is annoying, of course, but it is not easy to accept a thief’s boss,” said a waitress at a restaurant in Minas Gerais. “People have to take to the street and smash everything,” a kitchen helper interjected. Of course, the silent majority in Brazil is not Bolsonaro. Lula’s team does not plan to call for demonstrations in defense of democracy, as it sees the best option as to proceed quickly with the transfer of power.
After winning the election, Lula went to rest for three days on the beaches of Bahia, the most left-wing wing in Brazil. The task of approving the transition with Congress was taken over by his vice-president, centrist and former contender Geraldo Alckmin.
Lula’s Labor Party is working for a huge budget to confront a serious humanitarian crisis
But everything indicates that the Labor Party has succeeded in agreeing with allies in Congress an expanded budget with 200,000 million riyals of spending needed to address a serious humanitarian crisis, with more than 30 million hungry. These swift measures of social support and Bolsonaro’s inability to back up his calls for action are expected to dampen sentiment for the coup.
But Wednesday’s large demonstrations exacerbated already palpable post-election anxiety in Labor. Two or three months ago, a victory of 12 or 15 points was expected. But Lula won by less than two points. The recent protests “represent a strategic moment in the Bolsonaro mobilization that has already become a huge problem for democracy,” tweeted journalist Igor Melo, who was covering the coup rally in Rio. “They are not just extremists; there are a lot of normal people out there.”
a lot of Establishment The politician and the big media agree that the monster is growing. But a few comments on a historical fact: If Bolsonaro did finish opening Pandora’s Box in recent months, the first lid-lifting was done precisely by these political and media forces. With the help of politicized prosecutors of Judge Sergio Moro, they incriminated the ex-president without evidence, and impeached ex-president Dilma Rousseff without justification. Frankenstein will no longer be contained.
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