Isolated and silent after the defeat, Jair Bolsonaro makes the mystery in Brazil

Since losing re-election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has remained silent and secluded at his official residence in the capital, giving no explanations, creating an unnerving atmosphere of power vacuum at the top rung of the state.

Only after more than two weeks of confinement, interpreted by analysts as a sign of a furious inability to accept defeat, a first official explanation appeared.

The isolation of Bolsonaro, 67, in the Palacio de la Alvorada since October 30, is due to erysipelas, a bacterial infection skin affecting one of his legs, his vice president, Hamilton Mourao, said Wednesday.

“He has a health problem. He can’t wear trousers. How will he come in shorts?”, the vice president explained to the newspaper or globeinformation not yet confirmed by the presidency.

The vice president himself had told the Valor newspaper shortly before that Bolsonaro was being held for “a spiritual retreat”.

General Mourao even hinted that Bolsonaro’s imprisonment it could last until the end of his mandatewhich ends on January 1st.

“I am not the president. I cannot deliver the presidential sash to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva” in case Bolsonaro refuses this rite on the day of his successor’s inauguration, January 1, 2023, the vice president told the newspaper. Worth.

On the night of his defeat by just over two million votes against Lula, in the second round of the elections, Bolsonaro preferred to go to bed without acknowledging the victory of the left-wing leader.

Two days later he reappeared for a short and convoluted speech, half acknowledging his defeat, evoking the “outrage” and “feeling of injustice” of his supporters.

His social media accounts, hyperactive under his presidency, yes almost three weeks virtually silent.

absences

The president of Latin America’s largest nation missed the G20 summit in Bali and the COP27 climate conference this week.

Also he was replaced by his vice president for the presentation of the credential letters of several ambassadors, including that of Argentina, as confirmed to AFP by a diplomatic source from this country.

His official agenda, communicated by the presidency, is very limited: only half-hour meetings with ministers or advisers, always in the official residence of Alvorada.

Bolsonaro too ditched its traditional Thursday night broadcast on Facebookwhere he questioned the media’s approach to current affairs and defended its management, speaking directly to Brazilians.

political sign

For Oliver Stuenkel, of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), the presidential silence is above all political.

Bolsonaro “cannot officially recognize the result (of the election), but neither can he explicitly contest it for fear of problems with electoral justice,” he told AFP.

“Silence is the best solution” for the president, said the FGV professor. “He does not want to lose the support of his most radical supporters who are demonstrating in front of the army headquarters” in favor of military intervention. “And it works”.

On Tuesday, a public holiday in Brazil, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of large cities against Lula’s victory, which they consider “stolen”.

On social networks, Internet users have oriented themselves more towards the psychological hypothesis to explain the silence of the far-right president.

“He’s depressed and apathetic. His defeat destroyed his immunity,” one Twitter user joked. “But where is that wound that prevents Bolsonaro from functioning?” asked another, “In the leg? In the ego?”

Sylvio Costa, from the Congress website em Foco, does not rule out that “denial has turned into depression” in Bolsonaro, who “stopped working”.

first defeat

“This is his first defeat after nine electoral victories” in more than 30 years: he was elected councilor in Rio, deputy seven times and then president.

“His friends abandon him, he is the subject of a dozen investigations and fears prison, I think he feels lost,” said Costa.

What can happen between now and January 1st?

Bolsonaro could “remain confined, or reappear with a coup speech and create the maximum possible turbulence” for the Lula government, Costa estimates.

Meanwhile, Lula was welcomed as if he were already the head of state at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, and high-level meetings multiplied: “Brazil is back!” he exclaimed.

“In elections, the winner laughs and the loser cries. It seems to me that the defeated now did not know how to lose,” the president-elect from Lisbon said on Saturday.

Source: AFP

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