Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro during a ceremony in Brasilia on April 5.ADRIANO MACHADO / Reuters
First.
There is not the slightest moral condition to discuss the Brazilian presidential elections in 2022. To do so is to ignore the daily horror of Brazil, which on April 6 registered a record 4,195 deaths from covid-19.
Jair Bolsonaro has to be impeached now.
Every day that passes with Bolsonaro in power is a day with fewer Brazilians alive.
Killed not by a fatality, because the world is experiencing a pandemic, but because Bolsonaro and his government have spread the virus and have turned Brazil into a global counterexample.
We are on our way to the 400,000 dead.
If Brazil continues like this - as several epidemiologists warn - we will exceed half a million.
And the deaths will continue.
If this extermination is not enough to move those who have a constitutional obligation to promote or support a political trial against Bolsonaro, it is important that we open our eyes to a great probability.
Bolsonaro is a beast.
Cornered and isolated, it is almost certain that it will become more dangerous.
It is urgent to stop it before a horror even greater than hundreds of thousands of deaths occurs.
That Jair Bolsonaro does not care about anyone other than himself and his sons, it is very clear.
He does not hesitate to trip up those who helped him to be elected - let them tell the lawyer Gustavo Bebianno - and also those who helped him stay in office - let General Fernando Azevedo e Silva tell us, since Bebianno already can not-.
Bolsonaro is not loyal to anyone, he only cares about his own interests.
More than interests, Bolsonaro has appetites.
They only care about their own appetites.
However, Bolsonaro has taken a liking to popularity and the idea of being the leader of a movement.
Bolsonaro, a poorly finished mix of mad dog and court jester, who for almost 30 years sucked from the public coffers as a deputy without doing anything relevant, appreciated that he was finally being taken seriously.
And that had an effect on him, as on anyone.
Bolsonaro was elected and began to govern with generals who supported him, just him, a captain who left the Army through the back door so that he would not be arrested (again).
Bolsonaro was elected and began to govern with Paulo Guedes, an ultra-liberal economist who had the blessing of that metaphysical entity called "market", who thinks so much in the newspapers, always nervous and humorous, but rarely with a face.
Bolsonaro was elected and began to govern with the still hero (for many) Sergio Moro, with his cloak as a vigilante judge against the corrupt.
Bolsonaro, who was only laughable, was suddenly hailed as a "myth," chosen to lead a country.
It was a delusion in any sane mind, but the delusion came true because Brazil is not a sane country.
A society that lives with Brazilian racial inequality has no way of being sane.
A majority of voters who vote for someone who says they prefer their son to die in a traffic accident to be gay and who defends in a video that the dictatorship should have killed "at least 30,000" does not belong to a sane society .
This society, of which all Brazilians are part and, therefore, we are collectively responsible, has created both Bolsonaro and his constituents.
Never losing sight of his appetites, Bolsonaro believed himself delirious.
However, reality has been corroding it.
Finally, in the third year of his government, Bolsonaro finds himself isolated.
From a buffoon of Congress - an image with which he lived without major problems - he has come to be called "genocidal."
Having freed the people from political correctness, as he announced in his inauguration speech, may have also released various horrors, to the point of allowing a misogynist, racist and homophobe like him to become president.
But genocide is a stepping stone that is still in the same place.
You can't joke about genocide.
Those who still have something to lose have begun to move away from Bolsonaro, with the most varied excuses, throughout the first years of his government.
From Janaina Paschoal, one of the authors of the petition for
impeachment
against former President Dilma Rousseff, to Joice Hasselmann, former leader of the Government in Congress.
From the Free Brasil Movement digital militia to his own party, the Social Liberal Party.
And then the former Minister of Justice Sergio Moro left and fired.
And, at the end of March, it was the military's turn.
Bolsonaro wanted to make a show of force by dismissing a general, and the support of the crashed chests of the Armed Forces was reduced, at most, to half a dozen generals.
Bolsonaro still has to bear the breath of Vice President Hamilton Mourão on the back of his neck.
The general, the only one who cannot be dismissed, always finds a way to subtly warn the country (which has already brought three vice-presidents to the presidency since the redemocratization, one due to death and two due to dismissal) that it is at their disposal if necessary. .
Mourão is always around, managing to be remembered.
The fall of Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo has been a turning point in the Bolsonaro government.
Because Bolsonaro was forced to dismiss him and Bolsonaro does not like to be forced to do anything.
Resentful as a spoiled child, he reacts with childish tantrums or violence, which in part explains the miscalculated dismissal of the defense minister, equivalent to an elbow to show who is boss when he feels that he no longer commands enough.
But above all because Ernesto Araújo was important to Bolsonaro.
He was the enlightened idiot of Bolsonarism, responsible for giving a supposedly intellectual look to a government of ignorant people who know they are ignorant.
Araújo was always much more important than the guru Olavo de Carvalho because he was the ideologue of Bolsonarismo within the Government and brought with him the legitimacy (and the luster) of being a career diplomat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, albeit obscure.
His inauguration speech as chancellor was a machine gun of appointments to display erudition.
The final piece was delusional, but carefully thought out as the foundational document of what the then-chancellor heralded as a "new era."
A delusion.
But what is Bolsonaro in power if not a delusion come true?
Losing Araújo or, worse still, being forced to kick him against his will, means for Bolsonaro that there is no longer the simulation of a project beyond himself and the parapet that it represented, that there is no longer any desire or expectation of being something in the story.
Bolsonaro is now also officially just him.
And he knows who he is.
Bolsonaro has turned Brazil into a gigantic cemetery.
And that has been a recurring headline in very diverse language newspapers.
His project to spread the virus to guarantee immunity from contagion, a leaky ship that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson embarked on at the beginning of the pandemic but which he abandoned when the United Kingdom presented the worst statistics in Europe, has given the Brazilian government the title of worst management of the pandemic among all the countries of the planet.
If face-to-face summits were allowed, Bolsonaro would hardly be able to pose for an official portrait alongside any head of state with self-esteem and electoral concern.
The Brazilian is considered an outcast and being close to him can contaminate his interlocutor.
On the world stage it is not a myth, but a monkey (with the forgiveness of the animal that, thanks to Bolsonaro, today lives much worse in all its natural habitats).
Bolsonaro is radioactive and has infected Brazil's trade relations with the world.
Some large supermarket chains, for example, do not want to risk a boycott for selling meat and other products from a country ruled by a destroyer of the world's largest rainforest.
No one who appreciates the image of "democrat" wants to negotiate with someone increasingly attached to the label of "genocidal", especially in a Europe pressured by climate activists like Greta Thunberg and with the "greens" increasing their influence in various parliaments.
This Tuesday, 199 Brazilian environmental organizations have published an open letter to Joe Biden in which they warn about the risk that an imminent cooperation agreement between the United States and the Bolsonaro government would bring to the climate emergency, human rights and democracy.
Finding out that the Biden government has held closed-door talks with the Bolsonaro government on the environment for more than a month has taken the democratic world by surprise.
According to the letter, negotiations with Bolsonaro - a pandemic denier who has dismantled Brazil's environmental policy that indigenous people have accused in the International Criminal Court of crimes against humanity - contaminate Biden's narrative, which he has vowed to fight against. the pandemic, racism, the climate crisis and promoting democracy in the world.
“The US president has to choose between fulfilling his inauguration speech or giving Bolsonaro resources and political prestige.
It is impossible to have both ”, states the text.
After more than two years with Bolsonaro in power, Brazil is experiencing one of the worst moments in its history.
The economy has collapsed.
The Brazilian GDP is the worst in the last 24 years.
Hunger and misery have increased.
The Amazon is getting closer to the point of no return.
Bolsonaro's four sons (his daughter is just the result of a slip, remember?) Are being investigated for corruption and other crimes.
Her connection with the paramilitary mafias of Rio de Janeiro and the intersection with the execution of Councilor Marielle Franco - she was an icon - are becoming more and more evident.
One after another, the world's leading newspapers portray Bolsonaro as a "global threat" in their editorials and reports.
Who remains with Bolsonaro today?
Paulo Guedes, announced as a super minister to appease market spirits, has been only a mini minister since the beginning of the government.
The fact that he continues to be the head of the Economy portfolio in a government with such a performance says much more about Guedes than about Bolsonaro.
If it were a private company, like the ones he defends so much, he would have been fired many months ago.
And there is no use blaming the pandemic, because several governments in the world, including in Latin America, have shown much better economic results, among other things because they decreed confinement.
Market evangelism leaders are also by his side.
It is important to differentiate evangelicals so as not to commit injustices.
Those who supported and support Bolsonaro and his death policies are the great pastors linked to neo-Pentecostalism and Pentecostalism who have turned religion into one of the most profitable businesses of this time, and also some Catholic figures.
The churches have benefited from the cancellation of a debt, granted with the blessing of Bolsonaro, of 338 million dollars, money that, it is important to point out, is being taken from the population because it belongs to them.
Without any commitment to the lives of the faithful, those same pastors and priests opened their temples at Easter, authorized by Nunes Marques, Bolsonaro's mascot-magistrate in the Supreme Federal Court, causing agglomerations at a time when Brazil was surpassing the previous in record deaths from covid-19.
And there are also half a dozen generals in pajamas at his side, from whom the active generals are trying desperately to distance themselves so as not to further corrupt the image of the Armed Forces.
There is also the
Centrão
, the large group of deputies for hire that today commands Congress, but that has already shown that, overnight, it can change sides if it is more profitable, as it did with former President Dilma Rousseff in a very recent past.
This mob is the one that continues alongside Bolsonaro, who no longer finds a minimally convincing staff even to rebuild his own government.
Bolsonaro, who likes to be popular, sees casualties taking place in his base of support, astonishingly loyal despite the horrors of his government ... or because of them.
Its popularity is falling.
It is true that there will always be that group that totally identifies with Bolsonaro, for whom to deny Bolsonaro is to deny oneself.
This group, although a minority, is regrettably significant.
Unfortunately because it shows that a part of Brazilians are capable of ignoring the hundreds of thousands of deaths around them, even when the losses occur indoors.
It is a characteristic of mental distortion that is difficult to deal with in a society, but it is not new, since Brazilian society has always lived with the systematic death of the weakest, either from hunger, from untreated disease or from a bullet " lost ”from the police.
However, all those who find any loophole to disidentify from Bolsonaro or to allege that he deceived them in the electoral campaign turn away from him in horror.
As a society, we have to stop repudiating the repentant voters of Bolsonaro, because those people must be released or they will be forced to remain in the same place.
Everyone has the right to change their mind, which does not exempt them from responsibility for the actions to which their ideas have led them in the past.
Bolsonaro finds himself isolated.
And it is discovered ugly, an outcast to the world.
Not even the right-wing leaders of other countries want to see him close.
His former supporters, who benefited greatly from him, escape through the first crack they find.
Bolsonaro is cornered, as he showed when he dismissed Defense Minister General Fernando Azevedo e Silva.
And Bolsonaro cornered is even more dangerous, because he does not like to lose and has less and less to lose.
Do not forget that he is a man who planned to detonate bombs in the barracks to press for a better salary.
Setting off bombs says a lot about someone.
But you also have to pay attention to why: to improve your own salary.
Bolsonaro only acts fundamentally for himself.
His life is the only one that matters, as has been more than demonstrated.
The ridiculous idea that Bolsonaro is controllable is just that: ridiculous.
And, at various times, also opportunistic, for some to justify the unjustifiable, which is to continue with Bolsonaro or negotiate with him.
The man who rules Brazil is beastly.
It is moved by appetites, by explosions, by delusions.
But it is not a donkey.
Allied with the most predatory forces in Brazil, it has destroyed much of the hard-won framework of rights, a work begun by former President Michel Temer.
It has also dismantled environmental legislation and weakened protection agencies, allowing the Amazon to be exploited at levels only surpassed in the civil-military dictatorship (1964-1985).
Bolsonaro governs.
And, do not doubt it, he will continue to govern as long as he does not suffer an
impeachment
.
You have to understand that Bolsonaro is a beast, yes, in the sense of his bestiality.
But he's a smart beast with a project.
Few rulers have executed their project so quickly upon assuming power.
Barring the empty anti-corruption discourse, Bolsonaro has done and is doing exactly what he announced in the electoral campaign.
For this reason, what they call "market" is always on the verge of "losing patience" with him, but how long it takes ... It takes because you can always win a little more with Bolsonaro.
What they call market invented the rules that move the group of rent deputies called
Centrão
.
What matters are the ends and the ends are private earnings, to the people who darn it.
Or die in line at the hospital, like now.
The market is the
Centrão
with pedigree.
Much older and more experienced than his scion in Congress.
Bolsonaro has to suffer
impeachment
now, because what he will do from now on may be much worse and more deadly than what he has done so far.
And he also has to suffer
impeachment
for the obvious: because constitutionally someone who has committed the crimes of responsibility that he has committed does not have the legal and ethical right to remain in the presidency.
To have dismissed Dilma Rousseff for having made up the accounts to cover up the public deficit and not to dismiss Bolsonaro "for lack of conditions to
carry out
an
impeachment
now" or because "
impeachment
is a very bitter medicine" is incompatible with any project of democracy.
It is incompatible even with a torn democracy like the Brazilian one.
And there will be consequences.
What now remains for Bolsonaro, increasingly isolated and cornered, is to look at Donald Trump and learn from the mistakes and successes of his idol.
It will continue trying to give a self-coup, even if the Armed Forces affirm its constitutional role.
He will continue betting on those who kept him for almost 30 years as a deputy, his base since the days when he wanted to blow up the barracks: the lower commands of the Armed Forces and, above all, the military police.
Bolsonaro has been preparing long before Trump.
Whether or not he will succeed is anyone's guess.
But will those who are sitting on more than 70
impeachment
petitions
and those who still support the Government, will they watch to see what happens?
Are they seriously going to continue discussing a "center solution" for the 2022 elections and are they going to ignore all the crimes of responsibility that Bolsonaro has committed?
Have they seriously still not understood that it has always been out of control because the institutions that should control that it respect the Constitution have given up doing it?
Are they seriously going to risk reproducing in Brazil, in a much more violent way, the “insurrection” that the US Congress lived through on January 6, 2021, when the Capitol was invaded by followers enraged by Donald Trump?
It is worth remembering Republican Mike Pence, vice president in the Trump Administration, and Republican Mitch McConnell, party leader in the Senate: They gave Trump everything he wanted, believing they were safe, until on January 6 they discovered that they were also threatened.
You cannot control beasts.
In Brazil, however, with a much more fragile democracy, any of Bolsonaro's wicked adventures could have far bloodier consequences.
I may be wrong, but I think Trump did not intend for deaths.
He's an unscrupulous politician, a rogue businessman, a compulsive liar, and a
showman
who loves spotlight, but I don't think he's a murderer.
On the other hand, Bolsonaro is notoriously a defender of violence as a way of acting, he defends arming the population and clearly enjoys the pain of others.
Bolsonaro believes in blood and believes in inflicting pain.
Next to Bolsonaro, Trump is a mischievous boy with a weird toupee.
And Bolsonaro moves.
How many Brazilians still have to die?
Brazil already has a number of deaths from covid-19 comparable to the great extermination projects in history.
And graves are still being dug at an average of nearly 3,000 a day.
Many of these deaths could have been avoided if Bolsonaro and his government had fought COVID-19.
This is not an opinion, it is a fact proven by serious studies.
Public health is collapsed.
Private healthcare is also collapsing.
There is no use even having money in Brazil.
People die in line, which is also proven.
The best private hospitals are rationing oxygen and diluting sedatives.
And the deaths continue to multiply.
The question to the responsible authorities, in all areas, in the public and private sphere, is: how many Brazilians and how many more Brazilians have to die for you to fulfill your duty?
Many of us will continue to die, but I guarantee you: many of us will live to name each other's responsibility in history.
Their names will be written with the shame of cowards and their descendants will have their surnames stained with blood.
We will not die in silence.
And those who survive will call out each one of you, day after day.
Eliane Brum
is a writer, reporter and documentarian.
Author from
Brazil, builder of ruins: um olhar sobre o country, from Lula to Bolsonaro
.
Web:
elianebrum.com
.
E-mail:
elianebrum.coluna@gmail.com
.
Twitter, Instagram and Facebook:
@brumelianebrum
.
Translation of Meritxell Almarza