Bolsonaro threatened not to call an election | Brazilian President discusses alleged flaws in electronic voting

From Brasilia

Jair Bolsonaro has threatened, under pretext of alleged imperfections in the electoral system, to carry out a coup next year, by addressing thousands of followers gathered this Sunday in Brasilia. “Without fair and democratic elections, there will be no elections, ”harangued the retired captain. talking on the phone from the presidential residence.

His words and his image were reproduced on a giant screen installed on one of the loudspeaker trucks with accompanying scenes that toured the Brazilian center. “You are in fact my army, our army, we will uphold the popular, we will do what is necessary.”

Raising his tone, he added that This will give Parliament a “last chance” to approve the proposed constitutional amendment that changes the current voting model with electronic ballot boxes to one in which paper receipts are used.

No article of the Constitution provides that the chief executive has the power to annul elections because the form of suffrage seems inappropriate. In other words: what the far-right leader has done is anticipate his intention to strike by citing a fraud that only he believes is possible.

Last Thursday, he even said that the electronic ballot box had allowed a “fraud” in the re-election of President Dilma Rousseff against the conservative Aécio Neves, in 2014, which Neves himself denies.

Brasilia and Rio activism

After communicating by phone with his sympathizers in Brasilia, where the green-yellow jerseys of the football team predominated with the number 10 of the crack Neymar (who in the recent Copa América rendered good propaganda services to the regime of which he is sympathizer) Bolsonaro gave another public telephone speech in Rio de Janeiro where residents of the elegant Copacabana neighborhood, next to the beach, mingled with men dressed as military commandos with red berets and bowing.

Bolsonaro has chosen to speak on behalf of activists in Brasilia and Rio, which are two pro-government strongholds.

In the federal capital, to the spontaneous adhesion aroused by the president is added the guaranteed mobilization of the beneficiaries of the government, as is the case of the thousands of soldiers – without training to act in the ministries – who were easy and very well. paid in the federal public administration after the expulsion or demotion of civil servants.

For its part, Rio is the electoral district which has elected the current president seven times as deputy in addition to being a state dominated by the parallel power of paramilitary “militias”. They are gangs framed by Bolsonarism to perform all kinds of services, including acts of sabotage against the October 2022 elections in the face of the “fraud” that is anticipated from the Planalto Palace.

This Sunday, there were also events in São Paulo, in front of the headquarters of the local Federation of Industries, and in twenty-four other state capitals where cries for electronic ballot boxes to be shelved were interspersed with praise for the military and attacks on the opposition.

In a first survey, without statistical rigor, the official acts today brought together fewer people than those called by the opposition last week, under the slogans “Out with Bolsonaro” and “Genocide”, carried out in more than 400 cities , including provincial capitals. .

The intimidation expressed by Bolsonaro against the institutions is reminiscent of those pronounced last year by Republican President Donald Trump against the United States Congress on the basis of an unproven complaint of election fraud which was defeated by Democrat Joe Biden.

There are two substantial differences between the American and Brazilian cases.

In the first place, Trump tried but did not gain the support of the armed forces in his coup adventure, while in Brazil the military corporation behaves like a party loyal to the president even in its attacks on the electoral system and democratic institutions.

Recently, General Walter Souza Braga Netto, Minister of Defense, “threatened” the legislator to prevent the elections if he maintained electronic voting, according to the press. Earlier, the same general and the commanders of the armed forces had warned the Senate that they would not allow the investigation of military personnel implicated in probable cases of corruption.

Another difference with the United States is that Trump narrowly fell to Biden, while tAll polls from the last two months in Brazil indicate that Bolsonaro would lose by twenty points or more to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Several polls indicate that the leader of the Workers’ Party could be elected even without going to the poll.

Perhaps Bolsonaro wants to prevent the elections not because of a fraud that only he considers possible: but because if there were, it would be difficult for him to defeat Lula.