Brazil: a very difficult week for Jair Bolsonaro | President threatens institutional collapse

From Rio de Janeiro

They were two resounding defeats for far-right Jair Bolsonaro, one expected and the other surprising.

Tuesday, the Chamber of Deputies buried the bill which sought to bring back the printed vote, replacing electronics, introduced in 1996. It should be remembered that, contrary to what the extreme right lies repeatedly and compulsively, there has never been fraud in the current system.

Such a defeat was expected, but it did not serve to calm Bolsonaro’s minds: he continued to demand “verifiable elections” to accept the result of next year’s presidential elections, warning of the “consequences serious “if” most of us don’t trust the official tally.

And once again he criticized with unusual aggressiveness Luis Roberto Barroso, who, in addition to being a member of the Supreme Federal Court, the highest court in the country, chairs the Higher Electoral Court.

Friday, however, came the hardest blow: responding to a request from the Federal Police, another Supreme Court member who is the target of presidential fury, Alexandre de Moraes, determined Roberto Jefferson’s prison (photo, left, with Bolsonaro), president of the right-wing PTB party and angry ally of Bolsonaro.

The president’s reaction corresponded exactly to what specialists recommend to wait when a psychopath is upset: sheer vengeful fury. He has announced that he will ask the Senate for the impeachment of Moraes and Barroso (whom he has already described as “idiot”, “fool” and “son of a bitch”, in a clear example of what he said. considers the liturgy of the post he occupies).

By announcing the initiative, he returned, for the umpteenth time, threatened with institutional collapse. Already in the first lines of the text announcing that he will adopt the measure and that it has been disclosed on his social networks, affirms the temperate Bolsonaro: “Everyone knows the consequences, internal and external, of an institutional collapse, which we neither provoke nor wish for.”

Whoever writes these texts for him keeps the same style: confused, with grammatical errors, mainly in concordance. And with cataracts of manipulation and lying innuendos.

Yesterday’s text, while not directly mentioning Roberto Jefferson, says the public will not passively accept the continued violations of free speech and arbitrary prisons.

Roberto Jefferson was jailed following a request from the federal police. This request was supported by a complaint which confirmed the manipulation of information on social media, added to threats of physical assault against members of the judiciary, and requests to close Congress followed by requests for military intervention. . Also the demand that someone kill Lula.

In addition, he called on the hired killers allied with the presidential clan to act against “the communists”, that is to say those who oppose the government.

Bolsonaro considers it a constitutional right to do all of this. After all, he says, freedom of speech is exercised.

Roberto Jefferson is a character known to represent the worst and most abject that exists in Brazilian politics. A cheap manipulator, he has allied himself with all – rigorously all – governments since the return of democracy.

She became notorious when she denounced, during Lula’s first presidency, the existence of the “mensalão”, which would consist in buying votes from deputies to approve their bills in the House in exchange for monthly payments.

The existence of such a mechanism has never been proven. What has been proven is that several campaign debts of parties allied to the Lula government were covered illegally.

Such an insidious campaign had immense repercussions in the hegemonic media and almost prevented Lula’s re-election.

No media outlet has dared to advance on a fundamental point: a Jefferson ally was kicked out of an important post when mountains of public resources were diverted. Reporting the “mensalão” was his revenge.

Now, with Bolsonaro, he has overcome all the indecency displayed throughout his political life. And the truth is that they both deserve.