Four U.S. senators warn of “democratic decline” in Bolsonaro’s Brazil, saying bilateral relationship at risk

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Senators from U.S. President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party on Tuesday (28) warned of “democratic decline” in Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, noting that if the Brazilian leader breaks the rules in the October 2022 elections, the bilateral relationship is at risk.

The conservative Brazilian president, one of the leading international allies of Biden’s Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, has said that Brazil could see scenes similar to those of the mob of supporters of the former U.S. president who on January 6 stormed the Capitol in Washington seeking to prevent the certification of the Democratic presidential victory.

In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, four Democratic senators pointed out that “an alteration of the Brazilian constitutional order would jeopardize the very basis” of relations between the two most populous nations in the Americas.

“We urge you to make clear that the United States supports Brazil’s democratic institutions and that any undemocratic break with the current constitutional order will have serious consequences,” said the senators, including Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the upper chamber, and Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The U.S. senators expressed alarm over Bolsonaro’s “increasingly dangerous” claims about the 2022 general election, in which he plans to run for re-election.

Bolsonaro has claimed, without evidence, that the voting system lends itself to fraud and declared that he would refuse to concede defeat if he loses. “Only God gets me out of power,” he said.

“This kind of reckless language is dangerous for any democracy, but it is especially undeserved in a democracy of Brazil’s caliber, which for decades has shown itself capable of facilitating peaceful transfers of power,” the senators wrote in their message.

They also highlighted what they called Bolsonaro’s “personal attacks” on members of the Superior Electoral Court and the Federal Supreme Court, highlighting that they threaten to undermine the rule of law.

“Our partnership with Brazil must be a bulwark against anti-democratic actors, from China and Russia to Cuba and Venezuela,” the senators pointed out to Blinken, urging him to make support for Brazilian democracy “a top diplomatic priority”, including in Brazilian participation in NATO and the OECD.

The Biden administration has been discreet in its public statements about Bolsonaro. The U.S. Senate is composed of 100 senators, with left-wing Democrats holding 48 seats and right-wing Republicans holding 50. The two remaining seats are held by independents. Democrats hold the majority due to the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Blinken met last week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly with Brazilian Foreign Minister Carlos Alberto França in an appointment that a State Department official said sought to encourage Bolsonaro, a climate change skeptic, to elevate Brazil’s goals against global warming.

Brazil will be a crucial player for the planet at the UN climate summit in Glasgow in November because of the Amazon’s role as a CO2 sink.