On the eve of the coup d’état, more tension … and Lula | Opinion

From Rio de Janeiro

Never before, since the end of the military dictatorship which lasted from 1964 to 1985, Brazilian democracy was as threatened as it is today. The most incredible thing is that the leader of the mobilization of the coup, which also serves to sink the economy even more, is precisely the president, a rampant and unbalanced ultra-right called Jair Bolsonaro.

The events called for this Tuesday will clearly have a coup d’etat tone, and the organizer, Bolsonaro, will participate in two: in the morning, in Brasilia, from today with thousands of buses loaded with protesters (and who knows who paid them, both the rent as charged). And in the afternoon, in São Paulo, where a radical and inflammatory speech is expected from him.

From the posters disseminated in Brasilia and São Paulo, it is already possible to know the tone of what will be said. What is claimed ranges from the invasion of Congress and the Federal Supreme Court by army troops to the direct murder of some members of the Supreme Court.

There is a concrete fear of serious attacks in São Paulo, since the opponents of the extreme right will be demonstrating three kilometers from Paulista Avenue, the main financial center in Latin America and the theater of the “Bolsonarists”. There is reason to believe that infiltrators among opponents on the far right will try to create chaos.

The governor of São Paulo, right-winger João Doria, who was elected in 2018 to support Bolsonaro and later became one of his fiercest critics, has vowed to make the biggest mobilization of the military police in all the time, to avoid clashes. But when we recall that the majority of the more than 600,000 Brazilian police officers across the country declare themselves to be supporters of Bolsonaro, and that 30% of them have announced their intention to participate in far-right mobilizations (although it is prohibited by law), Doria’s announcement only increases the tension.

While Bolsonaro announced a decree that aims to prevent social networks from suspending the violent and deceptive publications of his followers, it is precisely on YouTube that the former president Lula da Silva made a brief statement at seven in the evening.

In four minutes and 58 seconds, he recalled that in eight years in the presidency, he always tried to announce, on September 7, national holiday, good news. Immediately, and with a particular aim and without citing the name of Bolsonaro, he denounced all the destructive policies carried out by the extreme right. He recalled the era of full employment and the Brazilian economy located among the seven most powerful in the world (now it is below the eleventh place), he recalled the blacks coming from the slums entering the universities, that is that is to say an image which was exactly the opposite of what my poor country is experiencing today, destroyed and devastated.

He also accused the far right of having chosen, instead of looking for vaccines for everyone, to attack the institutions and the coup.

Lula was energetic “ma non troppo”. He chose not to personally attack Bolsonaro.

Instead of attacking, gave several clues about what the election campaign will be like next year: compare the Brazil that your government has shown it can be, and the Brazil of today.

But none of this worries Bolsonaro: it is increasingly clear that he has one and only one obsession among all the others circulating in his increasingly unbalanced brain.

This obsession is as follows: either he defeats all his enemies (starting with the institutions), or he will be arrested by them as soon as he loses the immunity guaranteed to whoever occupies the post he occupies today.

And even more: that one or more of their four children are imprisoned for embezzlement of public resources, since it is more than proven that they engaged for their parliamentary functions of the “advisers” who never worked and invoiced most of their salaries.

By the way, Bolsonaro himself, when he was a national deputy, was an expert in this practice.

A few days ago, Bolsonaro declared and then reiterated that he saw only three perspectives for the future: go to jail, die or “victory”. He said that there is no one to catch him, that his life depends on God, and therefore the only alternative is victory.

We understand that by “victory” Bolsonaro means so much what can be achieved at the ballot box, an increasingly distant hypothesis, or whatever, that is to say a coup.

And that, for that, he is absolutely prepared to increase the tension and the degree of conflict with the other powers, the Judiciary and the Legislative, until reaching the rupture.

This is the central reason for his incitement to his most fanatic, radical and violent supporters. They are a clear minority, but extremely dangerous.

They will fill the streets of São Paulo and Brasilia. But they will not fill the polls in 2022. And that is also what Bolsonaro fears.