Bolsonaro Humiliated

On 30 March, former president Jair Bolsonaro arrived in Brasília from Orlando to face justice. ‘I’m being humiliated,’ he said. No more than a few dozen supporters had turned up to greet him. After the failed coup attempt on 8 January, it seems there’s little appetite for direct action among Brazil’s fascists (for the time being). The day after Bolsonaro’s return was the anniversary of the military coup of 1964, which he celebrated annually during his presidency. This year, the army vowed to punish anyone who did so.

In Argentina and Uruguay, the armed forces are banned from politics and hundreds of thousands of people march each year to commemorate and condemn their military coups. In Brazil, however, mass mobilisation from the left has been notable mainly for its absence for the past seven years. Under Bolsonaro, the military took over the government and ran it into the ground.

This explains, in part, Lula’s choice of the neoliberal technocrat Geraldo Alckmin for his running mate, as well as his support for the centrist Rodrigo Pacheco as speaker of the Senate and Arthur Lira in the Chamber of Deputies. Key figures including the finance minister, Fernando Haddad, and justice minister, Flávio Dino, are from the left, but Lula’s government is broadly centrist, as he promised it would be on the campaign trail. Nonetheless, in one recent poll, 44 per cent of respondents said Brazil is in danger of becoming communist, and it is worth remembering that last year’s election was incredibly narrow: Lula defeated Bolsonaro by only 50.9 to 49.1 per cent.

As Bolsonaro has noted, no one else on the right can lead, so he is the leader by default (a more capable candidate would probably have won re-election). But can he still lead? Will he? This is a question for Bolsonaro’s followers, but also for Lula’s government. Can the Justice Department and the Supreme Court fence him in?

Unlike Trump, whose litigation skills have been honed through decades of lawsuits, and who may yet snatch victory from defeat by beating the charges levelled against him and raising ‘huge’ amounts of campaign cash, Bolsonaro is in uncharted waters. He appears to have overplayed his hand: it is difficult to imagine him triumphant in the current conjuncture. While Bolsonaro was in Florida, the rising star of the US far right, Governor Ron DeSantis, never met with him; neither did Trump. Both had bigger fish to fry.

Yesterday the federal police went to Bolsonaro’s house in Barra de Tijuca in Rio and took his cell phone. His close associate, Lieutenant-Colonel Mauro Cid, was taken into custody. Cid has been accused of running a racket in fake vaccine certificates out of Planalto, the presidential palace that Bolsonaro’s followers partially destroyed on 8 January. Bolsonaro claimed to have been vaccinated twice in Duque de Caxias, but on the date of the second dose he was in Barra de Tijuca. Even stranger, it took six months for the information to appear in the public health system, just before Bolsonaro and his entourage were set to depart for Orlando.

Bolsonaro went on Jovem Pan, Brazil’s answer to Fox News, and cried about political persecution. (He once claimed that Covid vaccines would turn people into crocodiles, giving new meaning to the phrase ‘crocodile tears’.) There is little doubt, however, that Bolsonaro genuinely feels he is a victim of a conspiracy. He has now been accused of 21 electoral crimes, which are likely to make him ineligible for public office until 2030. There are also seven criminal investigations underway, with allegations ranging from diamond smuggling to mismanaging the pandemic.

The authorities have the computers that Cid was using in Planalto, as well as his cell phone, which may reveal new facts about the planning of 8 January, since Cid appears to have been the key intermediary between Bolsonaro and the architects of the coup attempt – many of them, like Cid, serving military officers. He is likely to be called before the congressional committee investigating how 8 January was organised. His father, a serving general, lived with Bolsonaro in the barracks, and was part of the same graduating class. Such ties bind: Cid filho is unlikely to give up his boss. Yet he is the missing link.

Unlike Bolsonaro, who was shunned by most of the world apart from Trump and the Gulf monarchies, Lula has managed to maintain diplomatic equilibrium with the US, despite his recent speech in China in favour of de-dollarisation and the agreements he signed regarding Chinese investment in Brazil. He has also maintained an independent stance on ending the war in Ukraine through peace negotiations. Should the Chinese peace initiative gain traction, Lula is likely to play an important role in selling it to countries of the Global South. But he’s also looking for Western European investment, and his international moves may have undercut his room to manoeuvre on the domestic front.

Congress is not co-operating, despite Lula’s support for the re-election of the heads of both chambers: several important initiatives, including a decree facilitating public water and sewage services, which is crucial to the wellbeing of Brazil’s poor majority, have failed or been gutted. Among the congressional sharks, not many of whom would give a penny to help Bolsonaro at this point (including members of his own party), the neoliberal consensus in favour of chaos still reigns.

Meanwhile, central bank interest rates – at 13.75 per cent, among the highest in the world – are suffocating potential investment and economic growth. The promised improvements in the welfare of the (mostly poor) people who voted for Lula have not yet materialised. They continue to wait patiently, but here in Salvador at least the situation is critical, with worsening violence among organised crime factions, both homegrown and imported from Rio and São Paulo. Should the situation continue to deteriorate, the far right may find an issue to run on, even if they no longer have a candidate.

For now, 56 per cent of Brazilians think the country is headed in the right direction. But without some improvement in the material conditions of Lula’s supporters – there are still 33 million hungry nationwide – the optimism may fade, with unpredictable political consequences.