Page 10 - MONTT LATIN AMERICAN MAGAZINE, AUGUST 2021 (English)

Brazil: Institutional Crisis Continues
Although some consider the actions of President Bolsonaro as bravado to frighten Congress and achieve its objectives, many believe that if these attacks on the Legislative and Judicial branches continue, the political crisis will spread and test the limits of Congress, of the Supreme Court and a part of society that still observes what analysts describe as “the authoritarian impulses of the chief executive.”
Problems continue for President Jair Bolsonaro. The plenary session of the Brazilian Congress rejected his proposal to introduce modi cations in the current voting system, which implies an important political defeat for the president and is also an attempt by the Legislature to close an arti cial controversy that the Head of State turned into the axis of his pre-campaign to be re-elected in 2022.
The President’s attacks against other institutions are continuous. For many, the president undermines Brazilian democracy by eroding trust in the voting system, given that he has been on a crusade for months to cast doubt on the reliability of electronic ballot voting, despite the fact that it has been used for 25 years and no fraud has ever been con rmed. Before the legislative vote, Bolsonaro and the military
leadership led an unusual scene, not seen since the end of the military government in 1985: the passage of a convoy of tanks through the political heart of Brasilia. It was barely 10 minutes, but that was interpreted as an authoritarian gesture and “an intolerable attempt to intimidate the representatives of popular sovereignty by a President who is also a captain in the reserve and is surrounded in the Cabinet by the military.” For his opponents, “Bolsonaro continues with his systematic strategy of normalizing authoritarian gestures.”
The Role of the Military
But it is not the only problem. The Head of State is increasingly harassed by legal proceedings against his campaign to
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