💡 SPOTLIGHT

Lula vs. Bolsonaro, Brazil has its own dark sequel brewing

Uncertain economic conditions and divisive posturing in favor of the Global South may send Brazilian President Lula da Silva's middle class voters back to the Right, where his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro is maneuvering between criminal charges and a return to the presidency, writes Marcelo Cantelmi in Argentine daily Clarín.

Brazil is living a political déjà vu. Leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is working through a third presidential term, reemerging from political and personal misfortunes that included 580 days in prison — and now it's the turn of his rightist predecessor Jair Bolsonaro to taste the threat of prosecution for his own excesses, including accusations that he led a coup to overturn the 2022 general election.

With both politicians, recent electoral victories were owed to voters tiring of and reacting to both the arrogance and corruption of Lula and his Workers Party (PT), and Bolsonaro's antics and contempt for democratic norms and forms.

At one point it seemed Lula was finished in politics, notably when he wound up in jail, and many may be thinking the same about his nemesis Bolsonaro, as he faces the consequences of possibly conniving with an angry mob to overthrow his successor.

Still, the former president's supporters put on a show of force at a mass rally in São Paulo on February 25, though it is too soon to tell whether this was the start of Bolsonaro's political come-back or a warning to judges.

The assault on government buildings in the capital of Brasilia in 2023 was partly inspired by Bolsonaro's charge that Lula had cheated in the elections — in a sinister echo of events in the United States after the 2020 victory of Joe Biden over Donald Trump.

Reacting to charges of his complicity in the assault, Bolsonaro told the crowd on February 25, "What is a coup? It's tanks on the street, weapons, a plot. None of that happened in Brazil. Now they're calling a planned decree to defend the State a coup. A coup using the Constitution?" That itself was an inadvertent admission that a document with plans for a rebellion had existed.

Investigations into Bolsonaro's possible sedition have relied on the testimonies of his former aide-de-camp (ADC), Lieutenant-Colonel Mauro Cid. From what he has said, at a June 2022 meeting, Bolsonaro "suggested ways of attacking the electoral system," but was also involved in drafting the purported coup document after the elections, the Folha de São Paulo daily reports.That is the document Bolsonaro cited at his rally.

And the government was delighted he did: the cabinet chief (prime minister), Rui Costa, swiftly said it must have been the first time "in history (suspected criminals had) called a meeting in a public square and confessed to the crime... in front of a crowd." [...]

— Read the full article by Marcelo Cantelmi for Clarín, translated into English by Worldcrunch.

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