A rifle in one hand and the Bible in the other. The image could roughly illustrate Jair Messias Bolsonaro, the president seeking a new four-year term in Brazil.
Captain of the army reserve, a point of reference for the far right in Latin America, the president spares no insults, outbursts and accusations in his public appearances. And in recent days he has tried to impose the idea that, if he doesn’t win, it will be because there has been “fraud”.
With the same basis that brought him to power in 2018 and which includes military, police, evangelical pastors and rural businessmen, the “people’s captain” has adopted the motto “God, Homeland and Family” for this campaign. which was popularized by Benito Mussolini in Italy in the 1930s.
Bolsonaro, 67, defends individual “full freedom”, which includes, according to a particular reading of the Bible, the “right” of citizens to self-defense and to possess and bear arms, promoted by him through laws promoted for his government.
Faithful anti-communist, he tends to see the hammer and sickle in everything that is adverse to him, and does not hide his nostalgia for the Brazilian dictatorship (1964-1985) and other military regimes of the 1970s in several South American countries.
He usually describes as “communists” all the progressive leaders who have emerged in recent years, from the Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the Argentine Alberto Fernández, without forgetting the Chilean Gabriel Boric and the Colombian Gustavo Petro.
He mentions them all to disqualify his main rival on Sunday, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a candidate from a broad progressive front and so far the favorite according to polls.
“Brazil cannot lose its freedom in the face of those who are against the family and defend gender ideology, free drugs and abortion” or “close the churches”, repeats Bolsonaro in his speech, alluding to the alleged intentions of Lula never actually declared.
Like former US president Donald Trump, whom he often cites as a “political model”, Bolsonaro is betting on permanent conflict, even with institutions like the Supreme Court or electoral justice, which he accuses of being “tools of the system”.
Since coming to the government, he has fought hard with justice, which has regulated his use and use of weapons. denial in the face of the pandemic of covid-19, which has so far caused nearly 690,000 deaths in Brazil.
Behind the pandemic
Since the beginning of the health crisis, Bolsonaro has downplayed its severity, condemned preventive measures, vaccinations in question and called the virus a “little flu”.
“We must stop being a queer country,” he shouted at the fear that the pandemic has instilled. Expressions that have earned him the accusation of being homophobic and that have been added to others considered sexist or racist.
With the same provocative attitude, he addressed the almost 140 requests for impeachment presented in Parliament and the opening of several investigations against him in the Federal Court, in particular for disinformation. He therefore did not hesitate to attack justice head-on.
At the end of his term, Bolsonaro still has the support of most of those who brought him to power four years ago: the influential arms and agribusiness lobbies and the vast evangelical electorate.
At the same time, it tried to attract the most vulnerable population with new social assistance. In recent months, he has renewed and expanded the subsidies he applied during the harshest months of the pandemic, despite the reluctance of his economy minister, Paulo Guedes.
the military past
Born in 1955 to a humble family of Italian immigrants, in a small town in the interior of the state of São Paulo, Jair Messias Bolsonaro opted for military life in his youth and trained at the Black Needles Academy, from which many of the then be ministers of his government.
However, his military career lasted only nine years. He ended it in 1988 after facing a trial in military justice for almost call it an insurrection ask for salary increases for middle-ranking officers.
Then his political life began. He was a councilor in Rio de Janeiro and then a federal deputy for almost 28 years, in which he went through a dozen parties.
In 2018 he ran for the presidency and won with 55% of the votes in the second round with the promise to “shoot” the left.
During the election campaign that year, he was stabbed in the abdomen by an unbalanced protester during an election rally. After a series of operations – which from time to time still give him health problems – he recovered and managed to bring the far right to power for the first time in Brazil, riding an “anti-system” wave that today, however , they don’t seem to have the same strength.
Bolsonaro, who presents himself as a Catholic, had five children from three marriages.
His current wife, Michelle, is a fervent evangelical who gained prominence in the campaign, where the president took up his slogan “Brazil first. God first.”
The president is very attached to his three eldest sons, all civil servants and now under investigation for suspicions of corruption or dissemination of false information.
Source: Clarin
