Isolated, Bolsonaro tries to be powerful | Op …

From Rio de Janeiro

Whenever a coward feels harassed, he distributes threats in the air that he knows he won’t be able to execute and slaps that get lost in the wind.

Whenever a psychopath feels threatened, he reacts by showing himself even more unbalanced.

This is exactly the attitude of the Brazilian far right Jair Bolsonaro: more and more isolated, he tries to be powerful.

Faced with the pandemic which has already affected nearly 14 million inhabitants and killed nearly 400,000, the lack of national coordination to act and prevent more than 3,000 Brazilians from dying every day, Bolsonaro has lost a substantial part of the acceptance he had in the upper classes.

A few weeks ago 500 of the most renowned businessmen, financial agents and economists signed a manifesto harshly criticizing him and his government. The sectors of the middle class that supported it, meanwhile, are also moving away, in part because of the devastation of lives, the collapse that threatens health networks and because of the economic crisis. growing.

The most popular classes are already suffering, in addition to the effects of the economy, from something that had been eradicated in the time of Lula da Silva: hunger. While Lula has taken the country off the world hunger map, recent studies indicate that now 59.8% of Brazilians – 125 million 600,000 people – had no food in the country since the start of the pandemic. quantity and quality recommended. And that for 44% of them, meat has disappeared from the daily routine.

More and more harassed since the last quarter of last year, Bolsonaro accepted what he had sworn never to do: seek support in Congress for the right-wing party group known as “centrão”. They are members of Parliament and senators who have joined forces, in exchange for posts and budgets, with all – literally all – the governments ofsince the return of democracy in 1985, after 21 years of military dictatorship.

Sometimes this type of alliance is not at all reliable. Just remember what then-president Dilma Rousseff suffered in 2016: she was impeached in Congress with the votes of her allies so far, including who had joined his government.

These are parties that are not sold: they are rented. And that they change their attitude according to the occasional convenience.

Currently, the Supreme Federal Court, Brazil’s highest court of justice, has ruled that a commission will be created in the Senate to investigate the conduct of the national government during the pandemic.. All disasters caused by the then Minister of Health, (active) Army General Eduardo Pazuello, will be targeted by the commission. If carried out thoroughly, the work of the commission will surely be a crush not only for the general, but also for the president himself.

Bolsonaro has no choice but to try to buy more media.

The Supreme Court has also specified that it will act with extreme rigor to repress – with obvious delay – the repeated excesses that Bolsonaro is trying to lead.

At present, he has ruled that the alleged links of Environment Minister Ricardo Salles with mining companies and invaders of public lands in the Amazon will be investigated., which is suffering the worst devastation in decades. Cold, methodical and highly efficient, Salles does nothing more than strictly follow what Bolsonaro has determined.

The recent crisis caused by the armed forces has made it clear that the president will receive no support to carry out his repeated threats of a coup. The more than six thousand soldiers, many of whom are active, scattered across all corners of government, from national ministries and secretariats to autarchies and public enterprises, do not have the sympathy of the Forces High Command.

Even the vice-president, reformed General Hamilton Mourão, is increasingly distributing statements that head-on criticizing the initiatives – or the constant inertia – of the government and Bolsonaro.

To all these signs that point to the growing isolation of the far-right president, one must add another aspect that means clear pressure on Bolsonaro, mainly with his eyes on next year’s elections: the return of Lula da Silva to the ring.

With each new public opinion poll, the percentage of voters who declare their vote in favor of the former president increases more and more.

The increasingly clear perspective is that Bolsonaro’s isolation will not stop growing. And also its aggressiveness and threats that fewer people believe every day.