Brazil: the institutional crisis between Bolsonaro and Justice continues

We closed the Supreme Court with a corporal and a soldier. Without harming, of course, neither the corporal nor the soldier ”. This slogan, uttered by the deputy and the presidential son Eduardo Bolsonaro on October 20, 2018, rose to fame throughout President Jair’s tenure. There are many reasons for this phrase to remain in the memory of the Brazilians of this first Bolsonarist government. From that moment conflicts between the Head of State and the judiciary are increasing. But now the dispute takes on another dimension: Bolsonaro calls for a reform of the electoral system, which represents a return to the printed vote. This battle must now be fought in Congress and you can lose it.

But the Brazilian president has the explicit support of the military leadership led, in this case, by the Minister of Defense, General Walter Braga Netto. July was, in this sense, a month conducive to presidential threats, which come and go.. A week ago, Bolsonaro insisted with his statement that “Without a printed vote, there will be no elections next year”. The reason given by the government is that elections by electronic ballot box, a procedure in force since 1998, give rise to “fraud”.

The legal reactions were immediate. A week ago, Judge Edson Fachin, who is vice-president of the Superior Electoral Court and a member of the court, came out to confront the chief executive. He argued that questions about electronic ballot security come from “political actors interested in seizing power and establishing a regime of consensual lies.”

And yesterday, it was the president of the TSE, Judge Luis Roberto Barroso, also a member of the Supreme Court, who spoke harshly: “The speech that if I lose it’s because there was fraud it is a statement from someone who does not accept democracy ”.

Meanwhile, the fall in popularity of the federal government, recorded from April, does not leave the Planalto Palace, the house of government, alone. Latest polls reveal that if elections were today, Lula will beat Bolsonaro in the first round; moreover, he would definitely move it to the second. It is this reality that drives the Head of State to talk about fraud all the time: “I have no way of proving that the elections were or were not fraud. But I have clues. And a crime is revealed with several clues, “he said yesterday, in the usual” live “on Thursdays in his office. On this occasion, he invited 25 journalists to attend his statements. But he warned them that there would be no opportunity to ask questions. With declining electoral preferences, which would jeopardize their hopes of validating a second term in October of next year, Bolsonaro spares no effort to use the court as a ‘punch ball’.

Latest polls reveal that if elections were today, Lula will beat Bolsonaro in the first round

To the alleged fear of electoral fraud, he added the argument that the STF had withdrawn all presidential powers to “coordinate” and “fight” the Covid-19. It is true that in April 2020, the Court granted states and municipalities the autonomy necessary to carry out their own pandemic prevention and control plans. But it is nonetheless true that at the time, the Brazilian president spoke of a “little flu” and that, based on this diagnosis, he wanted to prevent states from imposing quarantines. This led to the intervention of the STF, which reversed the federal government’s refusal to take action against infections and deaths. The STF did not hesitate to express its disagreement with the presidential remarks. And he even classified them as “fake News”.

Bolsonaro continued the challenges: “I will refute the Federal Supreme Court memo which said yesterday that it was not true that I had withdrawn powers, when in April of last year it prevented me from dismantling the restrictive measures imposed by governors and mayors ”.

The controversies between the Judicial Power and the Executive Power are not yet over. According to Brazilian media, the head of the Tribunal Luis Fux is due to speak next Monday, as is customary at the end of the judicial fair. On this occasion, he will send “messages” to the Planalto Palace, on the basis of the successive threats hanging over the presidential elections of 2022. The messages would not only be for Bolsonaro but also for Braga Netto, the Minister of Defense, and for the heads of the three arms.

Clash between justice and the armed forces

Last week it turned out that the army reportedly informed the President of the Chamber of Deputies Arthur Lira that the elections would be “canceled” if the current voting system was “maintained”. This generated negative reactions from the political world and the judiciary. STF Minister Gilmar Mendes, one of the oldest among the 11 members of the Court, said: “Representatives of the Armed Forces must respect institutional means in the debate on the electronic ballot box. Politics is done with arguments, with opposing ideas and above all with respect. In our democracy, there is no place for authoritarian armed coercion ”.

There is currently in Brazil a “military party” which has “political ambitions

According to Marcelo Pimentel Jorge de Souza, holder of a master’s degree in military science from the Escuela del Comando Mayor del Ejército, there is currently a “military party” in Brazil which has “political ambitions and that it is led by generals who were trained in the 1970s ”. The expert stressed that “even when the military party is not confused with the Armed Forces, it uses them to stay in power”. This analysis reflects the magnitude of the institutional crisis in Brazil. President Bolsonaro himself saw the magnitude and decided to dismiss General Luiz Eduardo Ramos from the command of the Civil House, which is the coordinating ministry of the cabinet. Instead, he appointed the senator Ciro Nogueira, a key politician to negotiate with Congress because of his weight in the center parties, the so-called “centrón”.

* Author from Brazil 7 days. From São Paulo, Brazil.