What Will it Take to Stop Jair Bolsonaro?

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Jair Bolsonaro is following Donald Trump‘s playbook and betting on the escalation of rhetorical violence aimed at whoever he considers being his opponent. But not only that. In the last weeks of Congressional and Supreme Court recess, the president of the Republic also seized the chance to discredit and interfere directly in government institutions.

Miguel Reale Júnior, jurist and Minister of Justice in the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government, president of CEMDP (Commission on Deaths and Disappearances) for six years and one of the authors of the impeachment petition against president Dilma Rousseff, believes that Bolsonaro “is about to pave the way” for at least one of the legal avenues for beginning another proceeding for removing a president.

The law, viewed by experts as very comprehensive and subjective in its interpretation, states that “behaving in a way that is incompatible with the dignity, honor, and decorum of the position” is one of the “crimes of responsibility” by which a president can be removed from office.

“What is happening is a combination of facts of this nature that affect people’s sensibility and the fundamental values of the Constitution. From the moment he is in favor of child labor, wants to reduce the punishment for slave labor, or make prisoners do forced labor, Bolsonaro is going against the fundamental rights of the republic. This is a breach of decorum,” says Reale Júnior.

While believing that the legal grounds for impeachment will include the sum of “provocations and insults”, the lawyer, affiliated with PSDB until 2017, states that there is no one specific causal factor for proceeding to move forward: “There are still no political conditions both in society and in Congress. He needs to wear himself out more. This may occur insofar as there is a buildup.”

However, he is skeptical: “I think civil institutions and society are very quiet. Demonstrations take place on social networks, where there is no civil society. What exists is strangers and anonymous people who expose their idiosyncrasies. Society needs to be vigilant to unite and join together against this process that I term cultural fascism.”

Lawyer Pedro Dallari, professor of International Law at the University of São Paulo (USP) and coordinator of the National Truth Commission (CNV), is more optimistic. Although he says it is “a paradox that a consolidating democracy has a president who denies its achievements,” he says he has no fears from the standpoint of citizenship and freedom. Because, in his view, “Bolsonaro is mistaken in thinking that his constituents all agree with his ultra-right values.”

“A combination of circumstances led Bolsonaro to end up by capitalizing on a stance against corruption, against unemployment, against the insecurity of public services, particularly security services, and this thrashed the candidacies of the social democratic field, including those of PT and PSDB,” argues Dallari, who was affiliated with PT until the mid-1990s, “but I think he has progressively lost support from a number of segments, including the conservative middle class that attaches importance to issues such as the environment or LGBT rights,” he adds.

In addition to impeachment, Reale Júnior points to the prospect of the president being charged with a common crime, such as the crime of abuse of authority.

The government has also been questioning the data on the ever-increasing deforestation of the Amazon and the risk is that deforestation will become for Bolsonarism what inflation, camouflaged for years in Argentina, has become for Kirchnerism.

(Source: Felipe Betim, El País Brasil)

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