The outgoing president, who has not yet made a statement about Lula’s victory, affirms that the protests are part of the “democratic game”
Brazil’s highways were still blocked on Thursday by thousands of supporters of current President Jair Bolsonaro, who took to the streets on Monday to protest leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory in last Sunday’s presidential election. After several days of blockades and tension on the country’s main roads, the far-right president has said enough is enough. “Free the roads and respect the right to come and go,” Bolsonaro asked last night in a video released on his social networks, where he stressed that the movement that supports him cannot “lose its legitimacy.”
Since Bolsonaro’s message, it has been possible to see a decrease in trucker blockades. The Minister of Justice, Anderson Torres, noted on Twitter that this morning there were 158 blockades and that the number “has been decreasing.” The Federal Highway Police reported, for its part, that 834 blockades, between partial and total, were controlled throughout the country since the beginning of the demonstrations last Sunday night and that the number of affected states fell from fifteen to twelve .
The president, who has not yet made any statement about Lula’s victory, was nonetheless in favor of the protests. In this sense, he affirmed that “other demonstrations that are taking place throughout Brazil, in the squares, are part of the democratic game.” In them, his supporters demand a “military intervention” to prevent the investiture of the leftist leader. “As long as the enemy is not defeated, we will not get out of here. As long as we don’t achieve victory, we won’t let go of our hands”, pointed out dozens of people in one of the mobilizations, in front of the doors of one of the Army headquarters in the south of Sao Paulo, who ask between prayers and under the greeting Nazi that the Armed Forces take part.
Meanwhile, a violent episode has marked the protests. Yesterday, a driver ran over a group of protesters with his vehicle on the Washington Luís highway in the city of Mirassol, in São Paulo. In a video that has gone viral on social networks, the car can be seen moving forward with no apparent intention of stopping and attacking the protesters who were blocking its way on the road. At the moment there have been no fatalities, but there are at least ten injured. The facts are under investigation, according to the newspaper ‘O’Globo’.
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