AND
This Saturday, in another of the so many marches with Jesus –the one that attracted the most people– held in Sao Paulo, the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro once again insisted on one of his favorite topics, the war of good against evil
.
Once again he ranted fiercely against issues that dominate his pronouncements: We are against abortion, against gender ideology, against drug release, we are defenders of the Brazilian family
.
Up to this point, nothing new: the Brazilian president is one of the most ostensible defenders of ultra-conservative positions.
As usual, he warned about the risks of Brazil becoming a country painted red
. She asked that our country does not experience the pains of socialism
and after mentioning Venezuela, Chile, Argentina and Colombia, assured that we don’t want that for our Brazil
.
In front of a kneeling crowd in the street he declared: We are the majority in the nation, the majority of good, and in this war of good against evil, good will win again.
.
The problem is how good – read: Bolsonaro – tries to defeat evil, read: former president Lula da Silva, clear favorite in all the polls related to the October elections.
Two days earlier, last Thursday, in another of his weekly Internet broadcasts, Jair Bolsonaro himself once again attacked the Brazilian electoral system, once again announcing that he would present early
tests of the vulnerability of electronic ballot boxes. He also kept up his very violent attack against the Superior Electoral Court and against some members of the Supreme Federal Court, the highest instance of justice in Brazil.
It is worth remembering that since it was implemented, more than 20 years ago, no vestige of manipulation of the system has ever been detected. Bolsonaro, however, and shielded by his defense minister, active general Paulo Sergio Nogueira, continues to insist that a parallel audit
to the counting of the votes, which would be carried out by the Army. Otherwise, he announces that he will not recognize the result.
Recently, in a meeting with businessmen in Rio de Janeiro, retired General Walter Braga Netto, who held the Ministry of Defense and is now running for vice-president alongside Jair Bolsonaro, said that without the audit required by the far-right there will be no elections
. Then he backtracked, claiming that his words were misrepresented
. She forgot that the message was recorded by one of those present.
At the same time that he raises the tone of his threats, Bolsonaro encourages his most radical supporters – it is estimated that they correspond to 15 percent of the electorate – to remain on permanent alert
to demand auditable elections
. and announces a series of benefits
approved by Congress emerged in the wake of his election in 2018, and considered the worst since the redemocratization of 1985.
Between the benefits
there’s a aid brazil
which will benefit some 40 million Brazilians with 120 dollars a month until December, in addition to a one-time bonus of 200 dollars for truck drivers to purchase fuel.
Radically violating not only the electoral legislation, but the Constitution itself, this distribution of money, vetoed by law at election time, will be around the figure of 12 billion dollars. They are resources diverted from the already corroded Education and Health budget, and they mean a huge hole that will further increase the already high inflation forecast for 2023.
Brazil today has an unsustainable situation, due to the absolute lack of an economic and social policy on the part of the government. There are 53 million Brazilians in a state of poverty, and another 13 million in extreme poverty. Of every four Brazilian children, only one eats three times a day.
Inflation has exceeded the 11 percent mark for a year, which means a growing erosion in family income.
Bolsonaro, however, ignores this situation. He insists, in his increasingly angry pronouncements, that the nation is far better off than the world’s leading economies. He reiterates that both fuel and food cost here much less than in the United States, England and Germany, forgetting
mean income in those countries is at least 10 times higher than in Brazil.
The desperate insistence on staying in office has, in the case of Jair Bolsonaro, something more than the desire to cling to power.
He knows that without the immunity guaranteed by law to the president, his direct destiny will be to face justice, and that it will be difficult for him to escape a long sentence for all the crimes he committed while sitting in the presidential chair.
