BRAZIL
Who’s in Charge?
Brazil has been facing three threats recently: a public health emergency due to the coronavirus, a political crisis stemming from alleged corruption in the rightwing, populist administration of President Jair Bolsonaro, and an economic meltdown.
Any of these three could threaten the stability of a nation. Now add in growing calls to oust the president and counter calls for a military takeover and you have a situation careening out of control, analysts say.
“The scenario has given Brazil’s generals an opening to insert themselves back into the front lines of politics, a role they last played during the country’s 21-year military dictatorship, which ended in 1985,” the New York Times wrote.
How did Brazil arrive at this moment – again?
Let’s start with the president’s handling of the pandemic, which has turned coronavirus-denial into an artform: Bolsonaro has resisted lockdowns and mocked those who fear it. As a result, Brazil might now have more coronavirus cases than the US, according to a study cited in the Week. It has less capacity to handle the sick, however.
And as the pandemic has raged, the Brazilian president and his family have become mired in a web of scandals and investigations.
Recently, the country’s Supreme Court blocked Bolsonaro from appointing a family friend as head of the federal police after the resignation of Justice Minister Sergio Moro, who publicly said that Bolsonaro had pressured him to choose a police official in Rio de Janeiro. Moro claimed that Bolsonaro wanted a Rio chief who would give the president information on the investigations into his two sons, Reuters explained.
Moro said Bolsonaro sent him a text message that read, “You have 27 superintendencies (of the federal police). I just want one, the one in Rio de Janeiro,” the Associated Press reported.
A video has surfaced to back up the charges against Bolsonaro, Al Jazeera reported.
Bolsonaro denied the accusations. But the Supreme Court has sanctioned a probe into the matter.
Meanwhile, Moro, the former lead judge of the Petrobras “Car Wash” investigations that ultimately led to the arrest of ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and, arguably, the election of Bolsonaro, is one of the most popular figures in Brazil, wrote Forbes.
“President Bolsonaro’s signature issue was the Car Wash and cleaning house. Sergio Moro is the living embodiment of that cause,” Kevin Ivers, vice president for Latin America at DCI Group in Washington, D.C., told Forbes. “This is a profound and potentially fatal blow for Bolsonaro’s presidency.”
Investigators have also identified Bolsonaro’s son, Carlos, as running a criminal fake news racket that defamed the president’s enemies, wrote the Guardian. As the Intercept described in fascinating detail, another of the president’s son, Flavio Bolsonaro, a senator and former local lawmaker in Rio, has close ties to assassins for hire and was involved in corruption schemes involving phantom employees in local government.
Bolsonaro likely faces impeachment. Two of the five presidents elected since Brazil’s military junta ended in 1985 have been removed from office – most recently in 2016 – so there is ample precedent. Bolsonaro also has plenty of enemies among the Brazilian establishment. He yearns to be a strongman, opined Venezuelan political commentator Francisco Toro and Latin American analyst James Bosworth in the Washington Post, but he hasn’t built the coalition that a strongman needs to succeed.
“To undermine a country’s institutions and take greater individual control, you need to chip away at democratic rules over time,” they wrote. “It takes more than fire-breathing rhetoric to do that, it takes political skills, alliance-building chops and a bit of luck, too. To Brazil’s great fortune, Bolsonaro seems to have run out of all three.”
Meanwhile, the value of the Brazilian currency, the real, is plunging. The economy is on track to shrink 4 percent, and is on the verge of collapse. Food shortages loom.
As chaos engulfs Bolsonaro’s presidency – and ordinary Brazilians’ lives – speculation is rife that his vice president, retired Gen. Hamilton Mourao, is preparing to take over. Mourão at times has appeared to enjoy the pandemonium, the New York Times wrote.
“Everything is under control,” he said. “We just don’t know whose.”
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