Bolsonaro shakes the specter of fraud in the next elections with old videos and disproved theories

Jair Bolsonaro in São Paulo, on July 18 AMANDA PEROBELLI / Reuters

Sowing doubts about the credibility of the Brazilian electoral system is emerging as one of the axes of President Jair Bolsonaro's campaign. The president, who has been demanding changes for a long time, this Thursday intensified his offensive by dedicating his weekly appearance to air as evidence of fraud old videos that circulate on the network and theories already denied by the authorities. To give it packaging, he was accompanied by the Minister of Justice, a military policeman. This effort by the far-right to change the voting rules is considered a strategy to question the count if he loses the elections called for in 14 months, following the example of the American Donald Trump.

The far-right politician already threatened in the 2018 campaign not to recognize the result if he did not win.

Since starting his term as president, Bolsonaro has appeared every Thursday night on his YouTube channel to show off his achievements and attack his enemies without anyone questioning him.

Lately, the preferred target of their attacks is the judge who presides over the highest electoral body, Luis Roberto Barroso, as before were the magistrates of the Supreme Court or the governors who imposed restrictions in the face of the pandemic.

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This week, President Bolsonaro's intervention was also broadcast on the government television channel because he promised to "present evidence" of electoral fraud.

At the moment of truth, he himself described them as mere indications among the harsh attacks against the Superior Electoral Court.

He responded immediately by denying point by point the accusations, based on rudimentary home videos recorded in past elections, the testimony of an alleged computer programmer and a colonel in the reserve presented as an adviser to the Government.

Determined to play that card with his sights set on the 2022 elections, the president has summoned his followers to demonstrate this weekend in favor of the printed vote in this country that votes in an electronic ballot box.

Bolsonaro is very fond of provocations, to open unfounded debates, in order to divert attention when the news that hurts him begins to accumulate.

It is a pattern that has followed since he came to power, a method that also erodes institutions, weakening democracy.

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It continues to lose popularity in polls currently being led by Lula da Silva, unemployment is at record numbers and the Senate is preparing to resume the commission of inquiry into the actions of the Bolsonaro Government during the pandemic.

With 550,000 deaths, Brazil is the second most affected country behind the United States.

Thursday's was a two-hour live presentation full of conspiracy theories, misinformation, blatant lies and half-truths with which Bolsonarism sows confusion among citizens, creates a parallel reality and triggers mistrust in institutions, in name of transparency, freedom and the interests of the people.

It is the national populist policy 2.0.

An editorial

in the right-wing

newspaper

Estadão

maintains this Friday that “the president does not lie casually, but systematically.

The reaction to this must be institutional, with a strict economy of expletives and exclamations ”.

Here is an example of how the Bolsonaro strategy works: “Is it fair that whoever got Lula out of jail, who rehabilitated him, is the same one who counts the votes in a secret room of the Superior Electoral Tribunal? Where is the public vote count? ”, The president proclaimed indignantly, ignoring that it was the Supreme Court, and not the electoral court, that tried former President Lula da Silva and that Brazil has not confirmed any electoral fraud in recent years relevant. But the doubt is sown.

Brazilians have been voting for 25 years with an electronic ballot box that is subject to party supervision and even hacker attacks before each election appointment.

But Bolsonaro has insisted for years that the ballot box should generate a printed proof of the vote so that the voter has the guarantee of who he has voted for.

It is a recurring debate that in Brazil has never had the necessary support to translate into changes.

Congress debates at the impulse of Bolsonaro the umpteenth initiative in this regard.

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