Page 8 - MONTT LATIN AMERICAN MAGAZINE, SEPTEMBER 2021 (English)

Brazil: President Bolsonaro Back Before Justice of the Country
While his popularity declines to unthinkable levels and polls indicate him as a sure loser in next year’s presidential elections, the Brazilian Head of Government backtracks in his attacks against the Supreme Federal Court.
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Bolsonaro Appears to Break U.N. vaccine ‘honor code’
Almost a year after the crucial presidential elections of Brazil, polls continue to place former President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva as the winner against the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, whose popularity registers a record decline.
A poll carried out by the Datafolha Institute in September and published by the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper, indicates that, in the second round, the leader of the Workers’ Party would win with 56 percent of the votes against Bolsonaro, who would reach only 31 percent.
In addition, 59 percent of the electors say they would not vote in any way for the current Head of State, and 38 percent indicate the same about Lula da Silva. Fifty-three percent of those interviewed consider Bolsonaro’s government “terrible”, the worst percentage since the President came to power.
Even the rejection of the evangelical sector, key in Bolsonaro’s coming to power in January 2019, increased by 11 percentage points, from 30 percent to 41 percent. Entrepreneurs are the only ones who maintain their support, which amounts to almost 50 percent. This is the first survey carried out after Bolsonaro attacked the Supreme Federal Court, which increased the options for a possible impeachment process against him. His constant criticism, always without evidence, pushed the highest court in the nation to open an investigation against Bolsonaro.
The results of the survey are also a consequence of its negative management of the pandemic, as well as the rise in inflation, a considerable increase in the prices of gasoline and food and unemployment that reaches 14,4 million people.
The popularity of the president has been eroding since last January, when an emergency social program was reduced just when the so-called variant of Manaus took the pandemic to its worst phase, which in total meant the death of 590,000 Brazilians, the second most high in the world after the United States. Today, cases and deaths are finally declining, thanks to a late but successful vaccination campaign.
Independence of the Three Powers
On the other hand, the GDP figures are apparently good; the economy contracted less than any other Latin American in 2020, -4,1 percent, and recovered in 2021, by 5 percent, but the estimated number of hungry people has almost doubled since Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 and reached several millions. Meanwhile, inflation is at nine percent, the fourth highest rate in Latin America only behind Venezuela, Argentina and Haiti, with a devastating effect on real wages. Due to all of the above, currently the Head of Government retracted his attacks on the Supreme Court and other entities. In a document he stated that :“I never had the intention of attacking any of the powers (of the State); I want to say that my words, sometimes forceful, were the result of the heat of the moment ”.
Bolsonaro has never been so isolated, although he maintains a solid base and has pragmatic allies who at the moment show no signs of letting him down.
In his public statement in which he backs down from his words regarding justice, the President expresses his respect for the independence of the three powers of the State and affirms that their differences with the Supreme Court must be resolved in the judicial sphere and indicates that “ the people who exercise power do not have the right to stretch the rope, to the point of damaging the lives and the economy of Brazilians ”.
At the international level, the president also received criticism when, as is the custom, the leader of Brazil was the first to speak before the 76th version of the General Assembly of the United Nations, UN in New York. The Head of Government used his turn “to show a different Brazil from what is published in the newspapers or seen on television” and praised the environmental policy of his country, despite the fact that it is known that deforestation in the Amazon increased in almost 60 percent.
p8 Montt Latin American Magazine