But this time we watch it in slow motion, and the ending might be much worse, considering the role of the military in our national history and in the Bolsonaro government, as I discuss below.Ĭivil society has not been paralyzed. To Brazilians, Bolsonaro’s borrowing from Trump’s playbook feels like watching a disaster movie we have seen before. 2020 elections, Donald Trump used claims of fraud to encourage his supporters to take matters in their own hands.
Moreover, in his speeches, the president has linked distrust in the electoral system with armed resistance on the part of his supporters ( expanding access to firearms has been one of the government’s main policies).
A Disaster Movie in Slow Motionīolsonaro has been repeating this script (minus the foreign officials) on a weekly basis for more than a year. In fact, Bolsonaro believes that the voting system, the electoral judges, the press, and the pollsters all conspire to “steal” his election. He suggested to the diplomats that judicial-electoral authorities are working to favor Lula, who is leading the polls (in which the president does not believe). According to Bolsonaro, however, the electoral judges themselves are complicit in the frauds. After the meeting, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) issued an official statement once again fact checking and debunking all of Bolsonaro’s claims. He rehashed false stories of fraud that have echoed among his followers for years, even after being debunked many times by judges and other public authorities, the media, and civil society organizations. In mid-July, Bolsonaro even called a meeting with dozens of diplomatic representatives of foreign countries to try to convince them that the Brazilian electoral system is currently not transparent or reliable, and that, if he is defeated, the result will not be legitimate. They also know that since 2021, he has consistently threatened not to accept a defeat at the ballot. Those that follow Brazilian politics know that President Jair Bolsonaro is behind at the polls in his bid for re-election in the upcoming October elections.
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