Bolsonaro: In Free Fall?

The images were nonstop shared on social networks, positioned on Internet sites, made headlines in press media around the world. The demonstrations that took place in almost a hundred Brazilian cities and towns last weekend were a shout of unanimous uproar from a collapsed country whose government has been more interested in avoiding economic damage than the lives of millions of human beings.

It could be said that nothing could surprise us about a president like Jair Bolsonaro who has constantly repeated that the Covid 19 pandemic "has been oversized", although the cost for the South American giant is already about 217 thousand dead and almost 9 million these days are infected living their worst nightmare.

It would be necessary to ask the dwellers in the northern city of Manaus, whose health system collapsed before the disease, the system ran out of oxygen to care for patients, its authorities have been forced to urgently transfer hundreds of babies to other cities to try to save them and only a country like Venezuela has taken its solidarity aid there, although the Brazilian president - far from being grateful - has criticized the humanitarian action of Nicolás Maduro’s government.

I repeat: nothing should surprise us. But the people are hurt and their children die, while Bolsonaro explains with astonishing quietness that the start of the vaccination campaign which he had announced will be delayed for a few more weeks, also trying to minimize errors in government management to guarantee the medical supplies the country needs.

Faced with this situation, only last Saturday there were nearly 87 mobilizations throughout the country, initially summoned by the Communist Party of Brazil and the Workers Party, before the accusations of government officials against protesters of wanting to destabilize the country, the head of the Workers Party, Gleisi Hoffman, responded that demanding the removal of the right-wing president would not affect a "stability" that doesn’t exist in a country with such a grave crisis.

The most important thing about the protests is that on Sunday people from different political ideologies, from the center-right and the right, also joined them, regardless of political and religious beliefs, racial ethnic origin and the “Fora Bolsonaro” posters occupied avenues. The posters covered walls, large car caravans and reached large cities like Rio de Janeiro, Recife, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Belén, and Cuiabá.

In interviews with local and foreign media, some of the participants said that it was “the moment to show rebellion, the greatest electoral madness in history”, even making illusion of the mistake they had made when voting for someone so nefarious and macabre as Bolsonaro.

The demands also ask for the Congress to vote on some of the requests for the opening of the impeachment against Bolsonaro, presented in the Chamber of Deputies and which now adds up to 60, and it was officially presented a demand of indigenous leaders at the International Criminal Court to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, in reference to the incessant fires in the Amazon during his time in office, which he has also minimized.

Everything takes place having as background the decision of whether or not to take his son Flavio Bolsonaro and his assistant to trial again for various accusations before a Federal Court, nothing new because since his father's time in office began, this alleged businessman has been involved in the most dissimilar judicial scandals, all for different reasons that include corruption and money laundering, among others.

The government of Jair Bolsonaro, barely halfway through its term, is in free fall. His popularity is among the lowest in the history of that country, but it remains to be seen how much damage he will inflict to his country and to the millions of Brazilians for whom a solution to the economic, social, political and health crisis is not yet in the horizon. This crisis has hit the nation, increasingly isolated in the international arena. Let's hope, at least, that such a situation doesn’t result in the loss of many more human lives.

Translated by: Amilkal Labañino/ Cubasi Translation Staff