in Brazil, where a far-right former Army officer is moving closer to becoming the next president of the world’s fourth largest democracy. On Sunday, Jair Bolsonaro won 46 percent of the vote in a far more decisive victory than was expected. Because he didn’t hit 50 percent, he will now face Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers’ Party in a runoff on October 28th. Haddad won 29 percent of the vote Sunday.
Many critics of Bolsonaro warn the future of democracy in Brazil is now at risk. Bolsonaro has openly praised Brazil’s military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to ’85. He also has a long history of making racist, homophobic and misogynistic comments, once telling a female lawmaker she was too ugly to rape. He has encouraged police to kill suspected drug dealers. In April, he was actually charged with hate speech over his tirades. But Bolsonaro’s popularity has soared in recent weeks after he was stabbed while out on the campaign trail.
Maria Luísa Mendonça talking:
That’s a very dangerous situation in Brazil that I think is very important to monitor, because that could have an impact in the whole region. Like I said before, former President Lula, actually, if he was able to run, he would probably win very easily. But there was a vacuum created because he was put in jail with charges of receiving a bribe, but actually there is no evidence that he received the bribe. So, since the parliamentary coup against President Dilma Rousseff two years ago, we are in the situation of a limbo. We cannot consider that we have a democracy in Brazil right now. And so, Bolsonaro is the result of a series of attacks on democracy that started two years ago with the parliamentary coup against Dilma Rousseff.
We said that there was a coup because there was no evidence that she committed any crimes, but she was impeached anyway. And Bolsonaro at that time voted as a congressmember, voted for the impeachment in the name of the person who tortured her during the military dictatorship when she was in prison.
during the vote in Congress, most congressmembers voted in the name of the God, in the name of their family, and Bolsonaro voted in the name of the person who tortured Dilma during the military dictatorship.
DILMA ROUSSEFF: [translated] Yes, I can, indeed. The far right in Brazil, like the far right everywhere, is anti-woman, anti-black, anti-indigenous persons. And it is in favor of ending all oversight. And they struggled for this. They want to end any oversight of labor work situations, analogous to slavery, that continue to exist in Brazil. They are full of prejudice and intolerance. And they believe that they can resolve the most complex problems using brute force or violence, open violence.
What happened in the vote in the impeachment process that I suffered, well, legislator Bolsonaro cast his vote, paying tribute to the military dictatorship and torture and a torturer whose name was Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra. In casting his vote, he paid tribute to this man who was a torturer in São Paulo, and he was recognized in all of the processes of truth and justice that unfolded in Brazil. He said the following, to pay tribute to someone who brought terror to President Dilma Rousseff. A person who’s capable, during an impeachment proceeding, to justify his vote in this manner is a person who sows hatred. He spreads hatred because he only understands one language: the language of violence.
Bolsonaro represents the sector of the military that is openly fascist. Like I said before, he talks about raping women openly. He said that he’d rather have a dead son than a gay son. He praises the military dictatorship. He said that he will give the police—the police should be free to kill.
what happens now also is there is a lot of media manipulation. Since the impeachment of President Dilma two years ago, there is constant attacks on the PT, on the Workers’ Party. It was almost like all mainstream media in Brazil is like Fox News. There is no alternative. And also now, during the campaign, Bolsonaro started a campaign of fake news, especially on WhatsApp, that is not controlled. For example, Facebook has closed several accounts that were spreading fake news against Fernando Haddad and against the candidate for vice president, Manuela. So, you know, also Steve Bannon is one of the advisers for Bolsonaro. So there is a lot of misinformation and manipulation.
– In August, Jair Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo posted a photo on Twitter of him with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon. Eduardo Bolsonaro wrote, quote, “It was a pleasure to meet STEVE BANNON, strategist in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. We had a great conversation and we share the same worldview … and we are certainly in touch to join forces, especially against cultural marxism.”
I think that it’s also important to understand that the media in Brazil is portraying Fernando Haddad, the progressive candidate, as far-left, but when he was the mayor of São Paulo, actually, what he did was he built several daycares and more than 30 hospitals, and he tried to make the traffic in the city better, for example, having infrastructure for bikes. When he was ministry of education under the Lula administration, he created more than 18 new federal universities, more than 300 new campuses, university campuses, and there was much more incentive and fellowships for education at all levels. So, you know, he comes from an educational background. And, you know, he doesn’t come from any type of extreme-left background.
And so, what we have now is a very extreme, fascist candidate running against a moderate candidate. And our hope now is that three other candidates, progressive candidates, have said that they would support Fernando Haddad now in the runoff elections in a few weeks. So, hopefully, between now and then, they will be able to—
because those progressive candidates together will probably get about 20 percent of the votes, and if they are able to convince people that this is a dangerous path. And the challenge is how do we deal with media manipulation, not just mainstream media, but the manipulation on social media.
during the administration of Dilma Rousseff, just an example, unemployment rate was 4 percent, and now it’s 15 percent. So, of course, you know, there is an economic crisis, but instead of looking at the future, the mainstream media plays this role of giving incentive to fear, and that creates the space for a fascist candidate like Bolsonaro.
So, the question is how the—because the left-wing parties already announced they’re going to unite, be united for the second round. The question is how the neoliberal parties, let’s say, the mainstream conservative parties that are implementing structural adjustment policies—how, let’s say, the mainstream conservative, neoliberal parties would then—what decision they’re going to make, because it’s a risky decision to support a far-right fascist candidate. So I think that’s the main question.
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Maria Luisa Mendonça
director of the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil.
— source democracynow.org | Oct 09, 2018