Brazil has been immersed in a tense pre-campaign for a long year that was recently shaken by the murder of a member of Lula da Silva's Workers' Party (PT) at the hands of a Bolsonaro supporter in Foz de Iguazú.
There are less than three months left for crucial elections in which the electorate will decide whether to entrust Lula or President Bolsonaro with the course of the first Latin American power.
Bolsonaro yesterday launched his candidacy for re-election defending his government action, even in the pandemic, with winks at the female electorate, praises of God and brutal attacks on his great adversary: “A rich country is worth nothing if it elects a man as president. bandit, drunkard, ex-convict”, he proclaimed in Rio de Janeiro.
The murder in Foz de Iguazú has triggered fears of new episodes of political violence.
The victim was celebrating his 50th birthday with a party dedicated to his party, the PT, when the aggressor burst in with a gun in hand shouting: "Here we belong to Bolsonaro, sons of bitches!", and pulled the trigger.
The attacked, wounded, responded to shots before dying.
The Bolsonarista was seriously injured.
They were armed because they were members of two bodies of the security forces.
It is not the first murder this year due to what in Brazil they call political intolerance, but it is the one that has had the most repercussion, going viral immediately.
According to the Estadão newspaper, this intolerance has claimed 26 lives so far in 2022;
there were 71 in the 2018 campaign,
in which Bolsonaro was stabbed by a mentally ill man whom the judges considered unimpeachable.
Those suspected of carrying out the most high-profile attack in recent years, that of Rio de Janeiro's leftist councilor Marielle Franco, are still awaiting trial.
President Bolsonaro's responsibility in the current climate of tension and hatred is evident.
His warmongering speech, his constant attacks against other institutions, especially the Supreme Court, and his permanent questioning of the voting system generate enormous institutional tension.
He conceives and treats his political opponents as enemies, which seriously undermines democracy.
He has made it easier for civilians to buy weapons, and since he has presided over Brazil, licenses have tripled.
He spreads the fear that he will not accept a defeat against Lula, which the polls predict, and try to mobilize his own as Donald Trump did in the United States.
For the police, the latest murder is not a political issue.
In any case, it is the politicians, with Bolsonaro at the head, who have the obligation to lower the tension so that the elections are held normally.
For the time being, in the long pre-campaign, the police forces must maximize the security of both Lula, who is leading the polls and has recently been wearing a bulletproof vest, and all the other candidates running for president, governors and deputies.