From Brasilia
Great conspirator of coups. Jair Bolsonaro, escorted by the heads of the Armed Forces, attended the parade of war vehicles held in the center of BrasÃlia. After months of driving motorbike caravans, perhaps inspired by Benito Mussolini’s motorized choreography, the retired captain has now climbed another step in his destabilizing march. He blessed a procession of tanks and tanks that paraded in front of the legislative palace.
What was seen on Tuesday was “pathetic”, declared former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Favorite for next year’s elections in the face of a Bolsonaro eroded by public opinion but apparently solidly supported by generals, admirals and brigadiers. It is regarded as a leader, or “myth”, by members of the paramilitary militias.
military exercises
The units arriving in BrasÃlia this Tuesday are going to participate in military exercises next week in Formosa, a neighboring municipality in Goiás.. These maneuvers have been carried out every year since 1988, but it was the first time that there was such a trip to the Planalto Palace just to deliver an invitation to the governor. It is obvious that the invitation served as a pretext for the olive green uniforms to be displayed for a few hours in the capital of the Republic.
At 8:30 am, a military man in heavy combat clothes climbed the Planalto ramp until he was in front of Bolsonaro. The forced and heartless steps of the military and black smoke emitted by an armored vehicle due to the apparent bad combustion gave the scene an air of caricature. This was seen by some media, including the Globo group, the empire now regretting its Bolonarist past. On social media, the smokescreen fueled mockery and comparisons with the Los Autos Locos cartoon. The international press immediately echoed the facts. the english newspaper The Guardian entitled “Banana Republic of Bolsonaro”.
With this event Bolsonaro tried to pressure the deputies hours before the start of a session called to discuss the reform of the voting system with electronic voting machines which the government wants to replace with printed votes, claiming that the current model lends itself to fraud.
Jokes about the occupant of the Planalto are part of everyday life. The former captain is as pathetic or more pathetic than former Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori or Filipino tyrant Rodrigo Duterte, all three who came to power through elections. However, these personality traits of Brazilians are far from making them harmless. It is frivolous to underestimate their competence – and their obsession – to implement a totalitarian regime, be it a dictatorship or something similar. In addition to the satires, the political situation in this gigantic country is dramatic: its republican system was gradually eroded with daily attacks, and this Tuesday was one of the most treacherous.
After this military walk on Tuesday, there is less democracy than on Monday. Because, whether or not legislators want to vote on the reform of the electoral system, they will take into account the opinion of the military chiefs and the retired captain to whom they respond. A month ago, military commanders and Defense Minister Walter Souza Braga Netto warned the Senate that investigations into corruption in the military would not be tolerated, after which the senators seemed domesticated.
squid
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva did not refrain from using ironies in his comment about the spectacular convoy moved to the government house. He defined as “pathetic the scene” in which Bolsonaro “received an invitation” to watch combat simulations to be held in Goiás. He recalled that former presidents José Sarney, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Dilma Rousseff and Michel Temer They never performed a similar ceremony to receive the troops before the maneuvers.
The Workers Party chief denied versions of his intention to write a public letter addressed to the military in a conciliatory spirit. “There is no letter for the military, if there were a letter it would be for the Brazilian people and within them are the military”. And he concluded by deploring the overpopulation of generals in government, “If a military man wants to do politics that resigns, takes off his uniform and goes on the campaign trail, there’s no problem with that.”
military party
The Planalto ramp symbolizes with its rather steep slope the arduous path that leads to the height of republican power. Upstairs they were located on Tuesday the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force: General Paulo Sergio Oliveira, Admiral Almir Garnier Santos and Brigadier Carlos Almeida Baptista. Along with them was the retired Defense Minister Walter Souza Braga Netto. The four are the leaders of a group that does not exist in electoral justice, the military party.
One of the possible readings of Tuesday’s tancazo is to consider that party as the main support of a president who does not even have a party affiliation after having broken with the Liberal Social Party and failed in his project to create the Alliance for Brazil, who never gathered the number of signatures needed to be recognized.
The party of generals, admirals and brigadiers gathered this Tuesday at Planalto – where they occupy the main ministries – to intimidate deputies who were preparing to discuss the restoration of voting on paper, a whim of Bolsonaro which doesn’t have much support in Congress.
In the night of this martes, throughout the week, when the vote is concluded, the official project in favor of suffrage for ancient times will be known and will remain in electronic voting machines, which are the chances of a poor victory for the moment.
If the government project fails, it will be a defeat for the military party but not a coup de grace. Its existence tends to last either to pressure the elections (the military made it clear that they are vetoing Lula’s return) or to continue the attacks like the one that took place on Tuesday, which are a kind of micro-coups that are ending the political regime.
.