Despite Jair Bolsonaro losing the 2022 presidential election in Brazil, the far right is still very much alive in the nation. 58 million people voted for Bolsonaro compared to the 60 million who gave the Presidency to Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva. But many Bolsonaristas refuse to recognize the results of the October 30 elections. In this special program we analyze the political situation in Brazil, as well as the future and scope of Bolsonarism in the country.
“That thief is not going to climb the ramp of the Planalto Palace to receive the presidential sash.” Like many Bolsonaristas, Antonio refuses to recognize the victory of Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva in the elections on October 30. Since the beginning of November, this Uber driver has regularly frequented the camp that self-styled “patriots” have set up in front of the Army Headquarters in downtown Rio de Janeiro.
A monotonous “SOS Armed Forces” resounds among the few dozen people who in mid-December still resisted these protests, considered undemocratic by the Supreme Court. The demonstrators alternated this slogan with a laconic “Armed Forces save the country”.
“We don’t want a thief for president. This is inadmissible. Only an intervention by the Armed Forces can prevent this absurdity from becoming a reality”, affirms Joseli de Souza da Silva, a private security guard emphatically. Meanwhile, a crowd surrounds the journalist, shouting a cacophony of different slogans. A woman tries to interfere with the recording with a roar as categorical as it is surreal: “Communist Macron!”
“That kind [‘Lula’] He was a simple civil servant and suddenly he accumulated a fortune, he and his children, that almost no president possesses”, says the truck driver Francisco Uchoa. This is information that has been denied on numerous occasions by the main national and international news verification sites.
Nor could any electoral fraud be demonstrated in the electronic polls, as the defeated president Jair Bolsonaro has been denouncing throughout this year. Even the report made by the Armed Forces during the recent elections ruled out that possibility. But the Bolsonaristas continue to defend that thesis, even if they have no proof.
“We just want transparency in the electoral process. We need to know who was really elected,” insists Marina Maiques, a Bolsonaro teacher and activist in the Rio de Janeiro camp.
“On January 1 there will be a civil war in Brasilia! The patriots are not going to allow ‘Lula’ to be inaugurated”, assures another militant named Alberto. This taxi driver was born in the capital and reveals that all the WhatsApp groups in which he participates are mobilizing for riots. It is difficult to guess if the blood will actually reach the river. The Bolsonaristas had threatened to prevent ‘Lula’ from receiving the president’s diploma on December 12. It is the act prior to the investiture that determines the end of the electoral process, and that was finally carried out in the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) without obstacles.
In the past it was always treated by the press as a merely formal procedure. However, this year it gained unusual prominence because at night a group of Bolsonaro supporters tried to invade the headquarters of the Federal Police in Brasilia, where José Acácio Tsererê Xavante, an indigenous leader and supporter of Bolsonaro, was imprisoned. Protesters also destroyed several cars and burned some buses.
The arrest warrant for the indigenous person came from Alexandre de Moraes, president of the TSE and member of the Supreme Court, who was complying with a request from the Attorney General’s Office. The chief of the Xavante ethnic group was accused of having participated in several anti-democratic demonstrations in the federal capital. On November 30, he was filmed during an act against the victory of ‘Lula’ in front of the National Congress, harassing Moraes himself, considered Bolsonaro’s archenemy, and also Supreme Court judge Roberto Barroso.
A few days later, the Federal Police carried out a macro-operation in nine of the 27 Brazilian states against supporters of Bolsonaro, accused of being linked to the violent protests that blocked several highways for weeks after the elections and of organizing other “undemocratic acts”. . The operation was authorized by the Supreme Court, specifically by Judge Moraes, who issued more than 100 search and arrest warrants and four prison orders.
In addition, the Superior Electoral Court opened an investigation into President Jair Bolsonaro, two of his sons, Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, and the Minister of the Civil House, Walter Braga Netto, for allegedly promoting attacks against the Brazilian elections. . “The facts narrated conform, in theory, to the misuse of the media and the abuse of political power, especially considering the criteria set by the TSE for the investigation of these crimes in the case of conduct practiced through the Internet” , assures judge Benedito Gonçalves.
On the first day of the year 2023 it will be clear how strong radical Bolsonarism possesses. Among the main political analysts in Brazil, there is a certain consensus on the strength that Bolsonarismo still accumulates, despite the defeat at the polls. “This radical, authoritarian movement that he helped create is not going to end now. I believe that Bolsonaro will survive Bolsonaro himself. Maybe we will have to change its name,” Márcia Ribeiro Dias, a political scientist and professor at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UniRio), told France 24.
It must be remembered that more than 58 million Brazilians, that is, almost half of the voters, voted so that the current president could repeat his mandate. “Bolsonaro managed to unify the main conservative forces. In this spectrum, there are people with a more liberal profile and right-wing people with a profile more linked to the conservative agenda in the social field. He managed to centralize all this support,” recalls Carolina Almeida de Paula, a political scientist at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.
The question is whether Bolsonaro will continue to be the leader of the extreme right. After his defeat, the president has withdrawn into obstinate silence. In his few public appearances, he has been sad, leading some analysts to suspect that he suffers from depression. It is even speculated that, after his departure from the Planalto Palace, he could stay three months away from political activity.
Meanwhile, some of his allies begin to drift apart. This is the case of the former Minister of Infrastructure, Tarcísio de Freitas, recently elected governor of São Paulo, the richest state in Brazil. “I was never a true Bolsonaro supporter,” he stated in a recent interview.
There are several points on which Tarcísio de Freitas distances himself from Bolsonaro: he recognized ipso facto the result of the polls; He maintains a fluid dialogue with the opposition, especially with the Workers’ Party of ‘Lula’, and tries to get closer to the Supreme Court judges, who were heavily harassed by the extreme right-wing president throughout his entire term. The new governor of São Paulo is unofficially postulating as Bolsonaro’s successor in a more moderate version.
For now, the question that all of Brazil is asking is whether Bolsonaro will hand over the presidential sash to ‘Lula’. The current president has warned on many occasions that he will only carry out this symbolic act with a president who has been elected without fraud. Given that he has never recognized the victory of ‘Lula’, it is to be expected that he will not even appear during the inauguration ceremony of his rival.
‘Lula’ da Silva, for his part, has promised that on January 2 he will put an end to all the camps set up in front of the military barracks in the main cities of the country. On December 18, a lightning strike was responsible for giving a scare to the “patriots” installed in Brasilia. A 45-year-old woman had to be attended by the Fire Department. The victim presented “numbness in the legs, burning in the right arm, hypertensive state and altered vital signs.”
The Bolsonaristas who have resisted in the streets for weeks under a blazing sun and the torrential rains of the tropical spring could have their days numbered.
