Brazil: Hundreds of thousands repudiated Jair Bolsonaro | Massive protests against the president in major cities across the country

From Brasilia

Democratic resistance mobilized hundreds of thousands of people this Saturday in Brazil. according to the first estimates of the Centrale des Mouvements Populaires. Under an uncompromising sun, the first acts took place in the morning in Rio de Janeiro and the last were closed at night in São Paulo.

It was the fourth demonstration under the slogan “Out with Bolsonaro” since May 29 when the opposition decided to return to the streets despite the coronavirus which this weekend is expected to reach the mark of 550,000 dead since the start of the pandemic.

The Paulista avenues in São Paulo and Getulio Vargas, in Rio de Janeiro, marked the pulse with massive events that recurred, with varying degrees of intensity, in the capitals of the states and in hundreds of cities of the interior.

Social movements and political parties have recommended, and have been fairly respected, that the public wear masks in addition to respecting a prudential distance to avoid contagion unlike concentrations of official denial where the mask is rarely used.

To the slogans for the departure of the far-right president and against the “genocide” he caused due to his indifference to Covid-19 this Saturday, other flags were added such as the repudiation of the military for their organic participation to the government and the scandal of the Minister of Defense, General Walter Souza Braga Netto which, as it emerged Thursday, would have “threatened” the head of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira, to prevent the elections of October 2022. That is to say to strike.

It happens that Jair Bolsonaro would struggle to be re-elected next year, as he is at a great disadvantage compared to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva , as all polls released so far this year show.

From a column circulating in the center of Rio de Janeiro at eleven o’clock in the morning, an activist calls out to the generals squatting in the huge ministerial offices. Next year “there will be a vote, the military power is not above the civil power, all take to the streets” proposed the activist whose voice was amplified thanks to powerful loudspeakers.

Citizen Carnival

At times, the Rio mobilization seemed like a citizen carnival with couples dancing under red flags to the beat of drums and snare drums.

“We are living in a situation of democratic abnormality, added to the return of hunger and misery, we have more expensive gas every day, there are many people who have still used firewood,” denounced the councilor. city ​​council of Rio and former federal senator. Lindbergh Farias of the Workers’ Party (PT).

Around three in the afternoon, when some columns had already dispersed in Rio, São Paulo, the demonstrators began to arrive on Avenida Paulista, which over the hours was occupied by trucks equipped with portable scenes. At dusk, a sea of ​​people occupied all the alleys of this emblematic avenue of national political history.

Faced with this wonderful public framework, the former candidate for the presidency of the PT, Fernando Haddad, He declared that “this government must be abolished, preferably by impeachment”.

“Bolsonaro is constantly testing the patience of the Democrats” who are already fed up with him and his government, reinforced the head of the PT. Around seven o’clock Military police, known for their hostile attitude towards the opposition, cracked down on protesters on Consolacao Avenue, which crosses Paulista Avenue.

Previously Guillaume Boulos, the leader of the Homeless Movement had warned, “we are not going to sit in front of the 550,000 dead of the coroanvirus, with a genocide in progress, we are not going to wait sitting in front of 130,000 children orphaned by Covid, we let’s not wait until 2022, Bolsonaro’s ship has started to sink. “

Shortly after eight o’clock Raimundo Bonfim, of Central of Popular Movements, reported that this Saturday some 600,000 people were mobilized in more than 500 cities in Brazil and abroad. The leader acknowledged that the results were positive, because despite the fact that the appeal was lower than that of July 3, when they were 800,000, the “capillarity” of the protest increased, which penetrated a number unprecedented number of cities.

In Brasilia, where there were fewer people than at the beginning of July according to initial estimates, students, trade unionists and representatives of the LBGBT movement gathered in the early afternoon next to the hemispherical silhouette of the National Museum and from there they headed for Congress, across the Monumental Axis, the avenue in front of which the ministries are.

From the top of a truck, representatives of various organizations were turning, each with their demands such as increasing the grant to the “15 million unemployed, left by the neoliberal policy of Bolsonaro by the Minister of the Economy Paulo Guedes.”

A group of women led the march wearing a black parade on which was read, in white letters, “550,000 dead” caused by the “Bolsonaro genocide”.

Repudiation

Speeches were made near the Legislative Palace on corruption at the Ministry of Health revealed by the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry created in the Senate.

With the name of Bolsonaro, that of General Eduardo Pazuello was also repudiated, confidant of the president and minister of health during the most difficult months of the pandemic when millionaires’ contracts were negotiated for the purchase of vaccines with payment of bribes to middlemen, while direct purchase with laboratories at a lower price has been delayed.

The morning Bolsonaro took a motorcycle tour by the federal capital accompanied by a disproportionate number of bodyguards. The political data was the presence in the official entourage of General Walter Souza Braga Netto, the defense minister who is credited with intimidating Congress into eliminating electronic voting. The government’s argument is based on the supposed (absurd) risk of possible fraud, a narrative modeled on the one it used Donald trump last year to encourage the capture of the Capitol.

It is clear that General Braga Netto and the captain-president seek to provoke a new political upheaval. Through this type of tension, an already exhausted (dying) democracy is eroding after suffering a coup in 2016 with the impeachment of the president Dilma Rousseff and another in 2018 when the favorite candidate was barred from participating Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.