Brazil, which does not want Bolsonaro or Lula, obtains timid support in the streets | International

The calendar is brimming with protests in Brazil, even though the pandemic still kills hundreds of people daily and infects thousands. The first march promoted by those who aspire to have another presidential candidate than Jair Bolsonaro or Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022 gathered a few thousand people in several cities this Sunday. The original currency, Neither Lula nor Bolsonaro, was amended at the last minute in an attempt to attract the participation of the Workers’ Party. They left it in In Bolsonaro but not for those. The PT was not present, which, even at off-peak times, is Brazil’s most powerful political machine.

Those who marched in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and a handful of other cities want to oust Bolsonaro through impeachment or in elections. But they don’t want the PT to leave either.

“The more of us there are, the more options we will have to expel Bolsonaro, but we are still few,” Denise, 53, a disappointed doctor, said during the protest in São Paulo. Like the rest of the people consulted, he preferred to identify himself only by his first name. Denise added: “I will vote for the third way, whoever the candidate is, who is not Lula or Bolsonaro.” Three years ago, he voted for the retired soldier in the second round. He is one of the disappointed, especially because of his disastrous management of the pandemic.

This was the first opportunity to measure in the streets the strength of the so-called third way, about which much is said in the press, among businessmen and the elites, but which the polls until now present more like a intense desire that as a reality in construction that embodies a specific person 13 months before the elections. Those who do not want to be drawn into polarization have taken to the streets, those who were politically orphaned when Bolsonaro abandoned the liberal economy and anti-corruption agenda, or those who distrust Lula in because of his convictions – already canceled -. In response to the summons, many wore white, to distinguish themselves from the Bolsonarista green / yellow and the PT red.

The event in São Paulo took place on the same avenue, Paulista, where President Bolsonaro met and addressed a crowd on Independence Day last Tuesday. The president made various threats to the Supreme Court justices, which he retracted on Friday. Street vendors of T-shirts adapt their samples to the on-call demonstration. Business is business. The tables which a few days ago offered yellow t-shirts with the word “myth” next to Bolsonaro’s face, today they were black and next to the president’s face they showed the slogan In Bolsonaro.

Speeches focused on beating the current president, but his left-wing predecessor was not spared the verbal blows. Lula’s party refused to participate because among the organizers are two of the liberal youth movements which were the vanguard-anti-Dilma, led the street protests which led to the dismissal of Dilma Rousseff in 2016. These groups, Movimiento Brasil Libre (MBL) and Vem para a Rua (Come to the street), that some federal deputies got in the heat of this traumatic change and the Bolsonaro wave are now disappointed and agree with the PT in the wish to see the far-right leader withdraw from the presidency. Lula’s party supported the mobilization but without joining.

Symbol of this Brazil which does not want any of the favorites, an inflatable doll walked this Sunday along Paulista Avenue: a Bolsonaro in a straitjacket hugging a Lula disguised as a prisoner.

In the past five years, Brazilian politics appear to be on a roller coaster, culminating in Rousseff’s sacking, Lula’s imprisonment and release, and Bolsonaro’s unexpected victory. These sudden movements have seen the birth and death of all kinds of affinities and disagreements.

Among the many names that sound like a third way, Governor João Doria, who managed to bring the first vaccines to Brazil from China, Governor Eduardo Leite, who put in place a fiscal adjustment plan, is 36 years old. and has just declared himself gay, the Prime Minister of Health who was ousted by Bolsonaro from the government, Henrique Mandetta, and Ciro Gomes, a caudillo from northeastern Brazil and the center-left who was third in the 2018 elections, etc. “Anyone who is a Democrat in Brazil must understand that (Bolsonaro’s) impeachment is the only way out,” Gomes proclaimed.

Although they are still a long way off, one of the keys that looms for the next election is who will vote for those who hate the Bolsonaro-Lula duo, which leads the polls, if the second round is a duel between the two.

Lopes, a 58-year-old engineer who came to protest on Paulista Avenue, would like to see Ciro Gomes in the presidency, but if the final dilemma is Bolsonaro-Lula, he has it very clearly. “They can say whatever they want, but Lula is a Democrat, he always has been. And Bolsonaro is a prototype of a coup leader ”.

Robson, a logistics operator, and his partner Jessica, both 31, would like the candidate to be former judge Sergio Moro. “Or another right lane other than Bolsonaro,” he adds. But the truth is that after his departure from the Bolsonaro government and his break with the retired military, the polls leave few options for the head of the grand anti-corruption investigation. Robson lost confidence in Bolsonaro “when he broke all the commitments made to defend a liberal policy with a minimal state, which offers Health and Safety, and which is more efficient”. There is still a lot of party left until the Brazilians elect a president in October 2022.