Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro called for peaceful demonstrations on Tuesday in his ambiguous mini-speech and, in front of the Duque de Caxias barracks, in downtown Rio de Janeiro, a few thousand Bolsonaristas responded with banners that read: "Federal intervention now!"
Despite the tropical rain, the Bolsonaristas, dressed in the usual national team jerseys, asked for the help of the armed forces. “We are asking for a military intervention so that there is an investigation into the president-elect,” said Gilliard, a 27-year-old black hairdresser from the outskirts of Rio.
He did not suspect fraud. Bolsonaro has abandoned this delegitimization tactic, despite warning about it for months. Now what is being denounced is "a political maneuver between the Federal Supreme Court to get Lula out of jail," said Gilliard,
Thousands of Bolsonaristas demonstrated in front of barracks in São Paulo, Brasilia and other cities to protest against Lula's victory, despite the fact that there is no sign of irregularities in last Sunday's elections in which the former president, of the Workers' Party , Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, prevailed over the current president by only two million votes, 51% to 49%.
On the highway from Rio to Belo Horizonte, on Tuesday afternoon, a hundred Bolsonarists protested. “If you are Bolsonaro, pita!” read a banner. “Brazil!” shouted a man in a yellow Brazilian team shirt. Do you think Bolsonaro wants them to stay here on the road? he was asked. "Yes Yes Yes. It is an order that comes from the people.”
The military intervention they ask for is almost impossible to conceive in the post-election scenario. Before his two-minute speech on Tuesday, Bolsonaro consulted with high-ranking military officers, who, as reported Wednesday by Folha de São Paulo, urged him to recognize the result at the polls as soon as possible.
Bolsonaro requested data from the audit of the elections carried out by the Ministry of Defense, in an unconstitutional manner. Everything indicates that it has been decided not to question the transparency of the result.
But his men arrived at the old barracks with umbrellas and raincoats. “Today we have a corrupt elected candidate, who was acquitted by the Federal Supreme Court; we don't want to be ruled by a thief,” said another protester, in his 40s, wearing the Brazilian flag as a cape.
For these protesters, the two-minute speech that Bolsonaro delivered at the presidential palace in Brasilia the night before was by no means a “green light for transition”, as the newspaper O Globo had headlined. "The president said what he could, but we have the right to demonstrate."
What was most disconcerting was the warm Brazilian sympathy of the putschists. He did not at all meet the profile of violent neo-fascists that is perceived from the outside; 58 million Brazilians voted for Bolsonaro, many of them because they believe that Lula is guilty of corruption, despite the irregularities of a rigged trial by the judge and former minister of the Bolsonaro government, Sérgio Moro.
But the mistrust of these Bolsonaristas regarding Lula is not surprising. After all, only four years ago, media such as O Globo itself and most of the political establishment that now pragmatically supports the former president, promoted the politicized campaign of Lava Jato prosecutors to criminalize Lula.
In his speech, after a long wait of more than 48 hours after the result, Bolsonaro gave another example of the carefully planned ambiguity that characterizes him. "He managed to make an ambiguous speech by sending two opposite messages: one for the institutions and economic powers, the other to keep the Bolsonarist base active," said Rafael Abreu, from the Federal Institute of Bahia.
According to Supreme Court sources, Bolsonaro acknowledged in a meeting held before his appearance that his time in power "is over."
But Bolsonaro, although he defended peaceful demonstrations, justified the hundreds of roadblocks as "the fruit of indignation and a feeling of injustice about how the electoral process took place." He was referring to the action of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to suppress electoral propaganda considered false news.
Yesterday, a score of highways were still blocked, although greater police force has managed to dismantle most of the barricades of Bolsonaro truckers set up on Tuesday. Riot police were deployed by the governor of São Paulo, Rodrigo Garcia, on a highway out of São Paulo. Also in states like São Paulo or Minas Gerais, groups of soccer fans helped dismantle the barricades.
The Supreme Court announced strong sanctions against the Federal Highway Police, heavily infiltrated by radical Bolsonaroism, and its general director, Silvinei Vasques. She is not the only one. Part of the Military Police, especially in Rio, maintains good relations with the radical Bolsonarismo.
In the overheated Bolsonarist networks, videos and biblical messages, and fanatics urged people to rise up against Lula's presence in the presidency. “For the love of God, go to the barracks, otherwise Brazil will become Venezuela!” announced a woman in a message that went viral on the networks.
But the truth is that even the most passionate of Bolsonaro do not support these histrionic calls. Damares Alves, the evangelical senator, urged people to dedicate themselves to the opposition to the next government. Michelle Bolsonaro broke her own silence with an innocuous quote from the Bible that only the most faithful would understand.
The irony of the day: Nikolas Ferreira, the great hope of the Brazilian hard right, a federal deputy only 24 years old, chose to use Hugo Chávez's famous phrase, "for now", when urging the Bolsonaristas to accept the result. “The cultural and spiritual war continues. For now we have to give in,” he said in a video.
