Lula’s government has acted forcefully in the face of the incidents in Brasilia and the military has ruled out the path of a military coup. In addition, the president has received the support of the main international political leaders
We have witnessed what many have described as a repeat of the capture of the US Capitol two years ago. Certainly, the images evoke how the neopatriotic far-right responds when it loses the elections and sows conspiracy theories to harangue reactionary fanatics.
However, what we have witnessed in Brazil also has “purely Brazilian” characteristics that make comparison difficult:
– In the Planalto there was already a president in the full exercise of his functions (in the US case, the aspiration of the mob was precisely to avoid the official proclamation of the elected president).
– In Brasilia, the institutions taken have included the highest representatives of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary; This is relevant because some of the biggest setbacks to the Bolsonaro government came precisely from the judiciary and, specifically, from the Supreme Court (we will see if the Bolsonaro majority in Congress and the Senate applies its particular vendetta by promoting some impeachment procedure in the coming months, for example, against Judge Alexandre de Moraes).
– The crowd explicitly clamored for a military intervention, that is, a coup d’état without any legal cover (as was the case with the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016), acknowledging “without masks” that the ultimate motivation was not due to electoral imperfections but , plain and simple, to obtain power by hook or by crook.
Similarities between the cases of Trump and Bolsonaro
In addition to the obvious links between Steve Bannon and Eduardo Bolsonaro, as well as the international projection of the ultras of the so-called Alt-Right, there are two relevant facts that do coincide:
– The ambivalence of the previous president democratically defeated at the polls respectively.
– The confirmation of the functioning of the institutions and the impossibility of legitimately reaching power with the use of force. In the case of Bolsonaro, as Trump once did, he has played discursively between inflaming his hosts by calling them patriots, while taking care to explicitly harangue them to commit crimes. It is no coincidence that the former Brazilian president is out of the country in case he is investigated for this or other irregularities, such as his disastrous management of the pandemic, among others. In any case, this discursive ambivalence, which clashes with the resounding and high-sounding statements on other issues, is part of a calculated game where the supposed champions of the homeland are actually the most virulent anti-system.
Reflections for Brazil
As already stated in these pages, the Lula government emerged in a context of structural and conjunctural weaknesses. However, and despite the magnitude of the challenge faced just a week after the presidential inauguration, we can conclude that the balance for Brazilian democracy is very positive.
In the first place, it has been confirmed that the military (those truly decisive and with the power to command, not the retired or some low-ranking ones) have categorically ruled out the path of a military coup despite the insistent siren songs of a few.
Secondly, Lula’s government, hesitant at first about how to deal with the ultras embers it inherited from the previous administration, knows conclusively that action must be taken and the president himself has decreed it with “federal intervention” and ratified by the Supreme Court to suspend the suspicious actions of the Bolsonaro governor of the Federal District of Brasilia, Ibaneis Rocha, who first sinned by omission by not guaranteeing public order and, later, tried to break away from Bolsonaro by offering the head of his Secretary of Security, Anderson Torres , who was Minister of Justice in the Bolsonaro government and who was curiously traveling in the United States.
And thirdly, the rapid unanimous support of the international community (beyond certain outbursts of a domestic nature such as those heard in Madrid) for Lula’s democratic government strengthens his international position and the general consensus (from the United States and the EU to China and Russia, for example) in the face of fortunately banished militaristic adventures in the region.
Thus, beyond the scare and the tension, the tough game of chess that Lula will have to wage throughout this term in order to unfold the pieces and dominate the center of the board has been fought for the moment with an advantageous position against the aggressive opening displayed by his opponent from Florida. Legality, legitimacy, and the narrative are clearly on the side of the president, while the reactionary, victimizing, and anti-system ultras are entrenched on the other side. Lula 1, Bolsonaro 0.
This article has been published in ‘
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