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Both Sergio Moro’s resignation and the way he deals with the coronavirus pandemic demonstrate that Jair Bolsonaro has drastically reduced his concern over the democratic veneer that he has still conferred on his government.
The President of the Republic is duplicating institutions and putting lives at risk. If the short-term priority is to try to stop the investigations against his politicians, he also seeks to guarantee governance for the implementation of his ultra-conservative agenda and the conditions for his re-election in 2022. Therefore, as was openly promised in the campaign of 2018, it is necessary to destroy To build.
With the president with 36% approval, Brazil offers no conditions for a self-attack or impeachment. But democracy is not only interrupted by violent fractures. Sometimes it dies slowly.
Bolsonaro distances himself from the middle class who chose him based on self-deception that he would be a fighter for corruption and for which he (still) is obliged to pay a toll for fundamental guarantees. And with the help of his far-right base and part of the business community, he tries to expand populism.
Over time, the Brazilian government has shown that Bolsonarism is a cousin of Bolivarianism. But a more competent relative, because it took a few months for the country to be seen as a global outcast. Which is somewhat embarrassing for supporters of the president who threatened that Brazil would become Venezuela.
1) Erosion of democratic institutions.
In what is perhaps the most shameful feature of the Nicolás Maduro regime, traditional democratic institutions have been progressively attacked by the central power, either through the abusive use of the machine or by emptying it. Part of the Venezuelan opposition is also not democratic, making things difficult there.
The pressures for political interference in the Federal Police to attend to the personal interests of the President, which led to the resignation of Sergio Moro, is just the latest move by Jair Bolsonaro to intervene in the functioning of the organizations that work to combat corruption. . He also made progress against Coaf and the IRS and reviewed the triple list, choosing an ally for the Attorney General’s Office. In this way, he acted to protect his sons Carlos and Eduardo (suspected of being behind the factory from attacks against political opponents) and Flávio (accused of embezzlement of public funds).
Meanwhile, he supports the acts that defend the walls of the National Congress and the Supreme Federal Court and that require a new AI-5, demonstrations that were attended more than once, such as March 15 and April 19. Bolsonarism, like Maduro’s Bolivarianism, works with the idea of the popular revolution, with a changed ideological sign.
2) Outsourcing of responsibilities and conspiracy theory
Maduro always manages to blame the United States and “capitalist conspiracies” for the effects of their mistakes. But Bolsonaro went much further. After being considered by the foreign press as the world’s worst leader in the fight against the pandemic, due to his denial and his conspiracy theories, he began to outsource responsibilities for the impacts caused by the disease.
Although the quarantines imposed by the governors and mayors are responsible for reducing the infection rate, he considers them useless and blames the measure for the consternation of the workers, although his government was incompetent and delayed the transfer of resources to help the workers. and entrepreneurs. . It tries at all costs that the state and municipal governments bear the burden of the dead and unemployed, taking the responsibility off them.
It is not the first time that he has done this, but it is a method of his government. The environmental policy for the Amazon, for example, is disastrous and at the same time that it attacks the monitoring and control institutions, it manages to blame the NGOs, an alleged conspiracy of cultural Marxism and the machinations of the São Paulo Forum (in fact , an expressionless congress of bureaucracies of leftist parties in Latin America). In both cases, this helps keep your support base cohesive and alerts your most loyal followers. But the forest falls and burns, to the delight of its allies who take over the land and the chunk of illegal ranchers, non-law miners and loggers.
3) Concealment and demoralization of official data.
When Chavismo began to receive bad economic news, he preferred to kill the messenger: he intervened in research and statistical institutes, questioned his own data and tried to rebuild these institutions with fabricated data and without the slightest credibility, in which he was imitated, albeit to a lesser extent. measure. degree, also by the Kirchner governments in Argentina.
Bolsonaro does not care about transparency, otherwise he would have shown the results of the tests he carried out for the coronavirus and that, supposedly, were negative twice. The president was extremely uncomfortable with the transparency of the team of former Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta in the disclosure of the data. He wanted the number of healed to be the priority.
Bolsonaro has little control over the state-dependent Covid-19 death count, but benefits from chronic lack of evidence and underreporting of cases, which will never let us know the exact number of deaths. The death toll, according to studies, could be up to nine times greater than the 4,016 published this Saturday (25).
The government has a history of fighting numbers when they are unfavorable. The President has already stated that IBGE’s unemployment calculation methodology was incorrect because he disagreed with it. General Augusto Heleno, Prime Minister of the Office of Institutional Security, said that deforestation rates were manipulated and inflated because he disagreed with them. Osmar Terra, then Minister of Citizenship, said that he did not trust the investigation of Fiocruz, an internationally renowned institution, which today is essential in the fight against the pandemic because it did not agree with them. Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo does not believe in climate change and said that the increase in the average global temperature occurred because the temperature measurement stations that were in the “bush” today would be on the “asphalt”. The Economy Minister, Paulo Guedes, himself rejected the census questionnaire.
4) militarism
Chávez was a retired colonel, but most importantly, he brought the Armed Forces to the center of his government. His successor, Maduro, despite being a civilian, maintained and expanded this characteristic, dividing the first-level positions with generals, and the lower-ranking officers “equipped” various ministries. Available figures show that the military command of ten of the 34 ministries (29.4%).
In Brazil, the army controls eight of the 22 ministries, 36% of the total.
General Walter Braga Netto, Lieutenant Colonel Marcos Pontes, General Augusto Heleno, General Fernando Azevedo, General Luiz Eduardo Ramos, Admiral Bento Albuquerque, Captain Wagner Rosário and Captain Tarcísio Freitas. If we also consider Jorge de Oliveira, prime minister of the General Secretariat of the Presidency, who is senior in the Federal District Military Police, the proportion increases to 41%. Not to mention that Vice President Hamilton Mourão is a general.
5) Verbal histrionics and provocation of fights
Both Chávez and Maduro are known for their verbal incontinence. Virulent attacks on opponents and little aversion to ridicule. While Chávez called the United States “The Great Satan”, and received a “why not call you” from the King of Spain (yes, that monarch who thinks it is beautiful to hunt elephants), Maduro, among countless verbal crises, even said that The spirit of Chávez, after his death, spoke to him in the form of a bird.
Bolsonaro took Maduro’s place in international vehicle headlines for reaching a new level. Insults anyone who questions it, attacks parliamentarians periodically, turns the “golden shower” into a national problem, calls the wife of the French president ugly, accuses Hollywood actors of being behind deforestation in Brazil, suggests the need of torturing public servants, testifies that Nazism is left in the Holocaust Memorial, supports the demonstrations that demand the closing of Congress and the Supreme Court, apologizes for child labor, treats the Northeast in a prejudiced way, as it was The case of the “Paraiba Governors,” praising dictators and pedophiles, like Pinochet and Stroessner, literally put poop at the center of their government rhetoric. In his latest move, when he called the pandemic cold, cold, and hysterical, he was considered the world’s worst leader in the face of the crisis.
6) Attack on the free press
Maduro’s Bolivarianism has been accused of restricting press freedom, closing the media, and creating barriers to the work of journalists, which includes the imprisonment, interrogation, and deportation of foreign professionals.
Bolsonaro, since taking office, has seen the free and critical press not as one of the pillars of democracy, but as an enemy to fight. His government creates obstacles for communication vehicles that sympathize with him and generates benefits for those who sympathize. He insults, attacks and defames journalists and has said that certain policies taken by his government aim to weaken newspapers.
He has been especially aggressive with women journalists, as was the case with Patrícia Campos Mello, Miriam Leitão, Talita Fernandes, Marina Dias, Constança Rezende, Vera Magalhães, among many others.
In the reporters without borders 2020 global press freedom ranking, Brazil ranked 107th out of 180 countries evaluated (in 2019, we ranked 105th), while Venezuela ranked 147th (they were 148th). Despite all the problems, our institutions are stronger than the neighbor to the North, which still imposes checks and balances. But the fact is that we are closer to it than to other democracies in South America: Uruguay is 19, Argentina 64, Chile 51.
