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President Bolsonaro: Not a word of sympathy for the corona dead
Photo: Adriano Machado / REUTERS
The week had not started particularly well for Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
Shortly after Bolsonaro's close ally Donald Trump was defeated in the US election, prosecutors in Rio de Janeiro indicted one of his sons.
A little later, some of the most senior Brazilian military officials complained about his bad tone of voice towards Trump's elected successor Joe Biden.
If you run out of words, gunpowder must be used, Bolsonaro had threatened, because he saw Biden's demand for better protection of the Amazon as interference in his sovereignty.
As if all of that wasn't enough, this week had a special punch line in store.
When thousands of Brazilian municipalities elected new mayors last Sunday, the candidates supported by Bolsonaro played almost no role nationwide.
In important cities like São Paulo or Belo Horizonte they didn't even make it into the runoff election.
The evangelical incumbent Marcelo Crivella succeeded in doing this in Rio de Janeiro, but his chances of a further four years in office are extremely slim.
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This is surprising insofar as Bolsonaro's name had a different weight two years ago.
In 2018, the year of the presidential election, countless previously unknown politicians were elected to parliament, the Senate or governor in his slipstream.
Outsiders who came from the military, the police or the judiciary and whose most important and often only trump card at the time was Bolsonaro's support.
The demystification of the president
So this is the message that comes from these elections, despite all the local peculiarities: Bolsonaro has lost its radiance.
None of the 78 city council candidates who ran nationwide with the borrowed surname Bolsonaro succeeded in winning a seat.
It looks as if in the last few months a demystification of the man who is described by many of his followers as a "myth" has begun.
The question is whether this is the beginning of his decline.
The politicians who were successful in this poll are essentially from the large, ideology-remote center parties.
There are men like
Eduardo Paes
, who was
mayor of Rio de Janeiro between 2008 and 2016
, when the city was
going through
the best years of its recent history.
Even though various corruption investigations are ongoing against Paes, many voters considered his many years of experience to be more important.
It is similar in
São Paulo
, where the moderate
Bruno Covas
is the favorite in the run-off vote that will take place in 14 days.
Covas is a pupil of the local governor João Doria, who is considered one of the most promising challengers to Bolsonaro in the next presidential election.
Both Covas and Doria are popular mainly because, unlike Bolsonaro, they are committed to getting the pandemic under control.
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Bolsonaro had initially downplayed the epidemic as a "little flu."
This is now taking its toll: over 165,000 people have died from the disease.
In some parts of the country, the number of infections is rising again dramatically, and many intensive care units are busy.
Still, those who followed the advice of epidemiologists and scientists, Bolsonaro denigrated just a few days before the election as a "fagot".
Now Bolsonaro shows his true colors
When the pandemic peaked in Brazil six months ago, Bolsonaro instructed his finance minister to provide financial aid to the poor - thus making himself popular with the lower classes.
If a second Corona wave should unfold with force now, the coffers will be empty;
the government would have to raise money to fund new aid.
That would put a strain on the already over-indebted national budget and cause the already ailing national currency, the real, to fall further.
Many poor Brazilians therefore distrust Bolsonaro's promises to keep the financial injections in the event of a second corona wave.
Bolsonaro has no answers to these problems.
The man who presented himself in the election campaign two years ago as an outsider who, like Don Quixote, fights against a corrupt camarilla of traditional politicians, is now showing his true colors: He entered into an alliance with members of the »Centrão«, a political group that is notorious for their opportunism and greed - so he wants to protect himself against possible impeachment.
He dismissed his Justice Minister Sérgio Moro, who as a judge accused numerous politicians of corruption and was admired and celebrated for by many Brazilians, because he refused to give Bolsonaro exclusive insight into the investigations against his sons, who are involved in various corruption scandals.
One of the key figures in the trial against his eldest son hid for months in the home of a lawyer who worked for the Bolsonaro clan.
Bolsonaro also underestimated the sensitivity of his compatriots to the consequences of climate change and the Amazon fires.
The ruthless exploitation and destruction of the rainforest and natural paradises such as the Pantanal wetland hurts many Brazilians' hearts.
They see part of their national identity in the Amazon.
Bolsonaro fears Trump's losing image
But the hardest hit for Bolsonaro is the defeat of his idol Donald Trump in the USA.
His foreign policy was based on the model from Washington.
As long as Trump dominated international politics, little was noticed.
Now he is suddenly alone internationally. His foreign minister, who is driven by a crude anti-communism, seems to have fallen out of time.
Bolsonaro's allies therefore fear that Trump's loser image could rub off on Bolsonaro.
They see the first indication of this in the disastrous results of the local elections.
The President brushes aside such concerns, he reacts like his great role model in Washington: On election evening he vaguely raved about fraud.
A mishap came in handy: after hackers attacked the supreme electoral court's website, the count was delayed.
His supporters immediately spread doubts about the reliability of the electronic ballot boxes on social media.
You are now calling for a return to the pen and paper voting.
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