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The week had not started particularly well for Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Shortly after Bolsonaro’s close ally Donald Trump was defeated in the US elections, prosecutors in Rio de Janeiro indicted one of his sons. A little later, some of the top Brazilian military officials complained about his poor tone of voice compared to Trump’s elected successor, Joe Biden. If you are speechless, you have to use gunpowder, Bolsonaro had threatened, because he understood Biden’s demand for better protection of the Amazon as an interference with its sovereignty.
As if all that wasn’t enough, this week I had a special joke in store. When thousands of Brazilian municipalities elected new mayors last Sunday, the candidates supported by Bolsonaro played almost no role at the national level. In major cities like São Paulo or Belo Horizonte, they didn’t even make it to the second round. In Rio de Janeiro, evangelical incumbent Marcelo Crivella succeeded, but his chances of four more years in office are extremely slim.
This is surprising to the extent that Bolsonaro’s name carried a different weight two years ago. In 2018, the year of the presidential election, countless previously unknown politicians were elected to parliament, the Senate, or the governor in its wake. Foreigners who came from the military, the police or the judiciary and whose most important and often unique trump card at the time was the support of Bolsonaro.
The demystification of the president
So this is the message that comes from these elections, despite all the local peculiarities: Bolsonaro has lost his splendor. None of the 78 city council candidates who ran nationally with the borrowed last name Bolsonaro managed to win a seat. It seems that the demystification of the man that many of his followers call “myth” has begun in recent months. The question is whether this is the beginning of its decline.
The politicians who won this election belong essentially to the great ideological parties of the center. There are men like
Bolsonaro had initially downplayed the epidemic as a “minor flu.” This is now taking its toll: more than 165,000 people have died from the disease. In some parts of the country, the number of infections is rising again dramatically and many intensive care units are busy. Still, those who followed the advice of epidemiologists and scientists, Bolsonaro denigrated just days before the election as a “fag.”
Now Bolsonaro shows his true colors
When the pandemic peaked in Brazil six months ago, Bolsonaro ordered his finance minister to provide financial aid to the poor; this is how it became popular with the lower classes. If a second Corona wave develops strongly, the coffers will be empty; the government would have to raise funds to finance new aid. That would put pressure on the already over-indebted national budget and cause the already weakened national currency, the real, to fall further. Therefore, many poor Brazilians are wary of Bolsonaro’s promises to maintain financial injections in the event of a second corona wave.
Bolsonaro has no answers to these problems. The man who appeared in the electoral campaign two years ago as an outsider who, like Don Quixote, fights against a corrupt clique of traditional politicians, now shows his true colors: he entered into an alliance with members of “Centrão”, a political group that He’s known for his opportunism and greed, so he wants to protect himself against potential impeachment.
He fired his Minister of Justice, Sérgio Moro, who as a judge accused numerous politicians of corruption and was admired and celebrated by many Brazilians, because he refused to give Bolsonaro an exclusive view of the investigations against his children, who are involved in various corruption scandals. One of the key figures in the trial of his eldest son hid for months in the home of a lawyer who worked for the Bolsonaro clan.
Bolsonaro also underestimated the sensitivity of his compatriots to the consequences of climate change and the Amazon fires. The ruthless exploitation and destruction of the rainforest and natural paradises like the Pantanal wounds the hearts of many Brazilians. They see part of their national identity in the Amazon.
Bolsonaro fears losing image of Trump
But the hardest blow for Bolsonaro is the defeat of his idol Donald Trump in the United States. His foreign policy was based on the Washington model. While Trump dominated international politics, little was noticed. Now he’s suddenly alone internationally. His foreign minister, who is driven by crude anti-communism, seems to have run out of time.
Therefore, Bolsonaro’s allies fear that Trump’s loser image could rub off on Bolsonaro. They see a first hint of it in the disastrous results of the local elections. The president casts aside such concerns, reacts like his great role model in Washington: On election night he vaguely praised the fraud.
One mishap was helpful: After hackers attacked the Supreme Electoral Court website, the count was delayed. His supporters immediately cast doubt on the reliability of the electronic ballot box on social media.
Now he is asking to vote again on paper and pencil.
