The Workers’ Party of President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva interpreted this Tuesday as an attempt to blackmail the denier attitude of the outgoing president, Jair Bolsonaro. A behavior that he maintained in the brief and ambiguous message offered by Brasilia in which he did not admit defeat but agreed to hand over power to the winner of Sunday’s elections.
The whole episode, according to analysts consulted by this envoy, showed a deterioration in the leadership of the outgoing president despite the huge collection of votes he obtained in the elections, which he lost with only 1.8% of the votes but is was the second strong point of the country with almost half of the national electorate.
Instead of asserting himself in that power, the president preferred to plunge his country into a crisis which, even after the confused message from Brasilia, continued at unpredictable levels.
It was unclear this sunset Tuesday whether extremist transport groups, aligned with the president, would give up theirs coup rebellion from the presidential speech that tepidly condemned them.
“Bolsonaro blackmails the country and affects the transition” to the new government, Paulo Teixeira, secretary general of the PT, protested Tuesday morning.
“We can’t be aware of when he wants to talk, but he wants us to be aware of blackmailing us,” he said.
“He may or may not speak. Let him do it when she wants, let’s be calm. We know what their behavior is like and their lack of commitment to democratic institutions, “she added later.
Indeed, despite Bolsonaro’s irritating attitude, his cabinet had already made contact with Lula’s transition team Da Silvawho commissioned the vice-president-elect Geraldo Alckmin, a conservative politician highly respected by the markets, to coordinate the transfer with the outgoing government.
Bolsonaro had summoned members of the Supreme Court to a meeting at the presidential seat, but a majority of the magistrates rejected the invitation, in principle because the president had not admitted his defeat.
But in the second instance because the judges speculated that the president could pressure them to exchange their acknowledgment with a favorable attitude towards the same causes of corruption that surround his mandate.
Bolsonaro was accused of having bought, together with his family, fifty properties, paying in all cases in cash, apparently to avoid the verification of the transaction.
Complaints have also multiplied for opaque operations in the purchase of vaccines to deal with the Covid epidemic. In both cases there is a centuries-old information restriction imposed by the head of state, but which Lula da Silva has warned she will remove as soon as she takes office.
Divisions in Bolsonarism
On the other hand, and since the end of the elections, a fragmentation has emerged around the far-right president, as noted in the gradual departure from its main allies. His Economy Minister, Paulo Guedes, was quick to emphasize his satisfaction with the election result, believing it freed him from the burden of making the adjustments that will need to be implemented in 2023 to alleviate the fiscal deficits the country is facing. experimenting.
Likewise, the president’s allied governors have also distanced themselves from both the presidential silence on the elections and the protest of the truck drivers, which they promised to crack down.
The current and future governors of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, the most influential states in the country in size and economy and all in the hands of the president’s allies, have shown gestures of rapprochement with the winners of the elections and very harsh speeches with the transporters who remind them that “the elections are over and Lula da Silva has won them”, according to the outgoing governor of São Paulo.
The controversial Brazilian head of state, it is recalled here, had in the past used hard-line bearer groups. In 2018, an 11-day trucker strike blocked Brazil, causing an economic disaster. The gravity of this crisis has strengthened the career of Bolsonaro, who soon after came to the presidency fueled by the social fury against the political “caste”.
Saint Paul, special envoy
CB
Source: Clarin
