On 30 June 2021, Congress members across the political spectrum, social groups and lawyers filed a collective impeachment request against President Jair Bolsonaro. This follows more than 120 others, which have all been blocked by the speaker of the lower house of Congress. In the face of a pandemic which he has deliberately ignored, Bolsonaro has created a series of disastrous obstacles to the saving of thousands of lives, whilst at the same time being entangled in a series corruption and criminal charges involving his political allies and family. Since January 2019, when he took office, Bolsonaro has made 2,187 false or distorted statements, more than four a day.[1] Bolsonaro, his ministers or close advisers made 464 public statements attacking or undermining journalists. There were 254 attacks on journalists and communicators in 2020, 123 by police and officials; 20 were serious cases, such as murder and attempted murder and death threats. On 26 July Bolsonaro hosted the German deputy Beatrix von Storch, from the neo-fascist Alternative for Germany party.
Covid-19 catastrophe
Bolsonaro’s catastrophic insistence that the working class work as usual, so accelerating Covid-19 contagion, his pathological focus on economic production for the purpose of profit, has led to over 554,000 deaths. This choice has rattled the ruling class. Since mass vaccinations are essential for some economic recovery, Bolsonaro has become a liability to the ruling class, both politically and financially. On the streets, demonstrators and protesters have adopted the chant of ‘Bolsonaro Genocida!’ On 19 June different groups, including trade unions and human rights activists, demonstrated against the government, with 457 protests taking place in 438 cities in Brazil and across the globe against Bolsonaro’s monstrous policies. The protests that demanded that the government guarantee vaccine provision, financial aid, and food, were closely monitored by the National Brazilian Intelligence Agency. On 24 July, thousands of people again flooded the streets of over 20 cities in Brazil demanding Bolsonaro’s resignation. Chanting ‘Out Bolsonaro’, demonstrators demanded more vaccines, with the slogan ‘Brazil: where protests are not named by dates, but by the numbers of dead.’
The Senate investigation into the handling of the crisis has revealed dramatic failures in the purchase of vaccines. On 29 June the government suspended a $324m contract for 20 million doses of India’s Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, as ‘irregularities’ were exposed in the contract discussions. Federal prosecutors and police launched a criminal probe into the deal, citing high prices of about $15 a dose, and hurried talks in advance of regulatory approval for Covaxin. The investigation concluded that Bolsonaro was fully aware of the overbilling in the purchase of Covaxin doses, and a local outlet reported that businessman, Luiz Domingueti, also confirmed a bribe and offered to raise the cost of 400 million AstraZeneca vaccines by $1 per dose.
A recent meeting of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council expressed concern over the violation of the rights of indigenous peoples in Brazil and Ecuador, the violence directed at the indigenous population and accusations of genocide, as Bolsonaro’s ecocide policies in the Amazon continue.
Brazil’s official unemployment stands at 14.8 million in addition to the six million ‘discouraged’, who have no job and are completely frustrated in their searches. Put on the defence, Bolsonaro has been forced to instruct neo-liberal economy minister Paulo Guedes to release frozen resources from the ministries to pay for pandemic expenses. Meanwhile, to retain support, he has drawn in Senator Ciro Nogueira, of the right-wing Progressive Party (PP), and leader of the parliamentary bloc known as ‘Central’, a coalition making up his support in Congress, as his Cabinet Chief. Nogueira is under investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office, in cases related to Operation Lava Jato, a vast corruption scheme.
The rising tension led US President Biden to send CIA director Wiliam J Burns to meet Bolsonaro, his chief of staff Luiz Eduardo Ramos, minister-general of defence Braga Netto, and Augusto Heleno of the Cabinet for Institutional Security and others on 1 July, to discuss political-military cooperation and management in the case of civil disorder.
The 2022 elections
Polls show that former president Luiz Inacio ‘Lula’ da Silva would easily win the 2022 October presidential election, should he be opposing Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro declared ‘I will give the presidential sash to whoever beats me at the polls fairly, but not with fraud … I am not going to allow a fraudulent voting system at these elections.’ On 7 July, Bolsonaro stated ‘If that method [the electronic voting system] continues, we are going to have problems because one side may not accept the result. And that side, obviously, will be our side.’ On 29 July Bolsonaro used the federal government’s official media to broadcast a harsh criticism of the Brazilian electoral system, constituting another offence liable to impeachment. He provocatively claimed that the electoral system produced unreal results, preparing the ground for doubts about his opponents’ legitimacy. He clearly believes the words of Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, ‘Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.’ Bolsonaro used the same accusations in the 2018 elections after which the Superior Electoral Court demanded he present the evidence he claimed to have.
President Bolsonaro previously presented a bill to Congress to re-establish paper ballot voting, provoking 11 political parties across the centre and the right wing to reject it. Divisions in the Brazilian ruling class continue to develop. With Bolsonaro already condemning electronic voting, a strategy adopted by Keiko Fujimori in Peru, Carlos Mesa in Bolivia, and Donald Trump in the US, it is clear to see the President does not wish to concede power and has made passing remarks on seizing power militarily if he loses to voter fraud, a sentiment apparently shared by some of his army of supporters.
Alvaro Michaels and Lucca Orfeu
[1] Global Expression Report 2021
