Brazil: in bad shape, Jair Bolsonaro attacks institutions and elections – teller report

Two opposing crowds were massed in the arteries of major Brazilian cities on Tuesday, September 7. On the one hand the pros and on the other the anti-Bolsonaro, in a tense atmosphere on this national holiday. With a popularity rating at its lowest, weakened by the investigations opened against him, the Brazilian president is given the loser against ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for the presidential election scheduled for October 2022. The latest polls from opinion of the Atlas Institute published Monday, September 6, estimate that the rejection rate of the Head of State reached a record level of 61%.

Weakened at the end of nearly three years in office marked by the Covid-19 epidemic, which killed more than 500,000 people in Brazil, “Mito”, “the Myth” as his supporters call him, had explicitly called on his supporters to take to the streets Tuesday for a show of force. Buses to transport them to the hearts of the country’s major cities had even been set up. After an overview of the capital Brasilia, where thousands of them were gathered, the far-right leader went to São Paulo to hold a martial-tone speech punctuated by phrases with populist overtones, arguing by example “not wanting the comfort of the palate, but to be as close as possible to the people.”

Like Donald Trump, to whom he is often compared, before him, the Brazilian president has once again questioned Brazil’s electronic voting system, in force since 1996. Without ever providing proof, he did so. accuses of allowing massive fraud, and threatens to cancel the next presidential election if this voting method is not modified to include voting receipts in printed format.

“We want clean, verifiable elections, with the public counting of votes. I cannot participate in a farce like the one promoted by the Higher Electoral Court” (TSE), said Jair Bolsonaro, in front of nearly 125,000 people, according to Brazilian military police, dressed in yellow and green, the colors of the Brazilian flag. These repeated attacks risk weighing on his candidacy for 2022, the Supreme Court may declare him ineligible.

The president also attacked the institution, and in particular Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who ordered the opening of investigations against him and his entourage for, among other reasons, the dissemination of false information. “Either the head of this power (the Supreme Court) puts (Judge Moraes) in his place, or this power will suffer consequences that nobody wants”, he threatened before concluding: “Only God will make me leave (from power); I will never be imprisoned”.

“What is most worrying are these speeches by the president against democratic institutions, in particular the Supreme Court, unheard of since the return of democracy” after the military dictatorship of 1964-1985, reacted Tuesday the political scientist Mauricio Santoro, questioned by Agence France Presse.

In recent days, fears that the national holiday would degenerate had increased, with some observers fearing that a comparable force to the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Apart from several journalists molested in Brasilia and the arrest of several pro-Bolsonaro activists in possession of bladed weapons or having uttered death threats against a Supreme Court judge, the day was generally peaceful.