Bolsonaro returns to Brazil to face criminal investigations
Bolsonaro returns to Brazil to face criminal investigations
Leonardo Sakamoto writes about Jair Bolsonaro’s unhappy return to Brazil, as he faces the results of his alleged crimes over the election in Brazil.
Police arrest supporters of Brazil's past President Jair Bolsonaro during a protest against the new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, outside Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil, January 8, 2023. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino
On 6 January 202, supporters of Donald Trump protested as they were unhappy when he did not win the US election. Jair Bolsonaro was President of Brazil at the time. He said without changes to the election system in Brazil they would have a ‘worse problem than the US’. On 8 January 2023, he made a worse problem.
Bolsonaro said nothing after Lula won the election in October 2022. But Bolsonaro’s supporters took violent action across Brazil.
Thousands of his supporters blocked roads and caused supply shortages. On Christmas Eve, police arrested three for putting a bomb in a fuel truck to blow up Brasilia International Airport.
When Bolsonaro could not stop Lula’s inauguration as President, he flew to Florida on 30 December – two days before the change of power to the new president.
Nine days later, there was violence the Brazilian Capitol – much more serious than in the US. The violence was against the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary of the Brazilian government. Bolsonaro was in the US and he said he had nothing to do with it.
There is an investigation by the Federal Police to find who paid for, organized, and incited this attempted coup. The Workers’ Party says Bolsonaro was responsible. But his supporters say the Workers’ Party was responsible for the violence – a bad joke. For years, Bolsonaro told lies about electronic voting machines. He said the machines were corrupted and made to help Lula. He attacked the president of the Supreme Electoral Court and he promised his supporters guns and ammunition. Finally, he asked them to make violent protests to ‘save democracy’.
Bolsonaro saw he was less popular and he had less political power during his stay outside Disney World. And he saw other far-right politicians moving to take his place. So, he returned to Brazil at the end of March.
Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice, quickly ordered Bolsanaro’s interrogation as a way to find who organised the coup. Bolsonaro says the crimes were not his. But many people think it is clear that he and his supporters were responsible. Bolsonaro said the coup actions were to ‘increase individual freedom’. Behind this message is part of his philosophy to develop a vigilante society, where it is OK for individual people to find justice and punish others.
Bolsonaro is likely to spend the next few years fighting allegations of crimes before, during, and after his time as president. There are the investigations into the attacks on democracy. But also there are accusations about the deaths of Indigenous Yanomami people. Doing nothing to help them led to the deaths of 700,000 people from Covid-19. And there are also accusations about corruption in the Ministry of Education, and trying to buy votes from the poor.
The first big problem for Bolsonaro is the many lawsuits. He is facing 16 lawsuits calling for convictions of crimes over the election and to stop him standing in the 2026 and 2030 elections. People think it is very likely that they will find him guilty of some of the crimes.
NOW TRY THE ORIGINAL:
https://newint.org/features/2023/06/05/view-brazil-bolsonaro-lawsuits-coup-golpe
(This article is in easier English so it is possible that we changed the words, the text structure, and the quotes.)