Brazil takes to the streets to demand the impeachment of Bolsonaro

Opposition protests gained momentum this week with the formal membership of the former president’s Workers’ Party (PT) Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, favorite in the polls to beat Bolsonaro in next year’s election.

Lula, head of government between 2003 and 2010, weaves a series of alliances to be able to build his candidacy and has embarked on the task of the state where the Bolsonaro family and the most powerful evangelical churches are strong, Rio from Janeiro.

There he met on Thursday at a lunch with the so-called Primate Bishop of the Assembly of God-Ministerio da Madureira, Manuel Ferreira. The goal is something Lula has had in mind since his 580 days in jail for a sentence overturned later in Operation Lava Jato: twist Bolsonarism from its evangelical base in the neighborhoods and favelas of Rio de Janeiro.

Business man Silas malafia, electronic pastor and informal advisor to Bolsonaro, responded this Friday there will be “heavy artillery” against the former trade unionist in the electoral dispute of 2022.

Lula’s articulation is linked to the policy of alliances in Rio de Janeiro, in particular with the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), a group to which the governor of Maranhao joined today, Flavio Dino, after leaving the Partido Comunista do Brasil (PCdoB).

Within this framework of Lula as an electoral center, the opposition marches against Bolsonarism.

On the one hand is the so-called ‘third way’ contested by Labor Ciro Gomes and the neoliberal João Doria, since the ultraliberal magnate Luciano Huck He has stated that he will not be a candidate and will continue as a TV host.

In May, the survey data sheet gave Lula victory in the first and second rounds against Bolsonaro, which is why the president himself took the message and, at his worst moment of popularity since 2019, began to organize caravans of far-right motorcyclists in Rio, Brasilia and San Paul.

From the left-wing opposition, entities like the Frente Pueblo Sin Fiedo and the Frente Brasil Popular, which had respected the calls not to agglomerate, called on the masked opposition to demonstrate on May 29.

The demonstrations calling for the “Fora Bolsonaro” were surprising because of their scale across the country, but especially in Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. It is The supposed new climate officially led the PT to call for a march, according to its board of directors last Tuesday.

A Rio Grande do Norte state radio asked Lula if he was going to be on the other side of Bolsonaro in the caravans and take part in some of the protests, especially in San Pablo, the most populous and key city. as a national the window.

“I still don’t know if I’m going to the demonstration, I have a concern. I don’t want to turn a political act into an electoral act. I don’t want the media to take advantage of this to say that Lula is appropriating a demonstration. summoned by Brazilian society, “said the former trade unionist.

Bolsonaro has accelerated his agenda of narrative and neoliberal reforms (he carried out in the Senate the privatization of the electricity giant Eletrobras), while the House parliamentary commission of inquiry is approaching the Executive on its role in the pandemic , in particular by ignoring the vaccination and relying on ineffective remedies to convince the population to leave and break the quarantines.

The Brazilian Senate Parliamentary Commission examining the government’s role in the pandemic today announced that it has officially opened a criminal investigation against the Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga; his predecessor, General Eduardo Pazuello, former Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo and eleven others.

The president was also disowned today in committee for claiming that anyone with Covid-19 would not need to be vaccinated, fake news, during a broadcast on Facebook.

Calling Lula “9 fingers” (the former president lost a pinky finger while taking turns in a factory), Bolsonaro once again encouraged the specter of fraud in the 2022 election if the impression of a ticket is not added to the electronic ballot. box so that the voter can take it after voting.

The electoral justice has rejected this request on several occasions, but Bolsonaro is betting to withdraw it by law.

In this sense, he said that there had been a “fraud” during the election which he ended up triumphing in 2018. “He would have won in the first round and not in the second.

And he winked at the traditional right by stating that in 2014 before Dilma Rousseff there was “fraud” against the candidate Aecio Neves, from the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, now an MP and out of the public light after being recorded asking for a bribe from the owner of the multinational JBS refrigerator, Joesley baptist, during the government of Michel Temer.

In a polarized scenario, Bolsonaro was with the pastor today Silas malafaia in Marabá, in the state of Pará, to issue title deeds to small farmers.

“In this way we get rid of the harmful activities of the Landless Movement, private property is sacred to us “, The president said at the event, where the Bolsonaristas gave signals about what the campaign will look like for next year, not singing in favor of the president but singing a “thief Lula”.