{"id":7897,"date":"2022-09-07T07:20:06","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T11:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7897"},"modified":"2022-09-08T07:20:24","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T11:20:24","slug":"bolsonaro-turns-brazils-bicentennial-into-campaign-rally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7897","title":{"rendered":"Bolsonaro Turns Brazil\u2019s Bicentennial into Campaign Rally"},"content":{"rendered":"
President Jair Bolsonaro greets supporters in Copacabana beach during the country’s bicentennial independence celebrations, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2022. (AP Photo\/Rodrigo Abd)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Brazil\u2019s President Jair Bolsonaro transformed the nation\u2019s bicentennial Wednesday into a multi-city campaign event, but didn\u2019t use his appearances to undermine the upcoming election<\/a> as his opponents had feared.<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro, who trails former President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva in polls before the Oct. 2 vote, drew tens of thousands of supporters to rallies in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro. The armed forces put on military displays in the cities, with the president attending.<\/p>\n

The far-right Bolsonaro has stacked his administration with military officers and repeatedly sought their support, most recently to cast doubt on the reliability<\/a> of the nation\u2019s electronic voting system, which raised fears his speeches on Independence Day would be filled with fresh attacks. The far-right nationalist held back from doing so, and instead focused on attacks on da Silva and his leftist Workers\u2019 Party.<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro compared da Silva to autocratic leftist leaders in Venezuela and Nicaragua and called Brazil\u2019s former president \u201ca gangster.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will have a much better administration with us being elected, with the grace of God,\u201d the president said in a speech in Rio.<\/p>\n

His prior efforts to sow doubt about the voting system has prompted widespread concern among his opponents that he may follow former U.S. President Donald Trump<\/a> \u2019s footsteps in rejecting election results.<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro arrived at the military display in Brasilia accompanied by at least one of the business executives who allegedly participated in a private chat group<\/a> that included comments favoring a possible coup and military involvement in politics, and who is being investigated by Federal Police for possibly financing anti-democratic acts.<\/p>\n

The crowd, decked out in green and yellow, chanted against da Silva, who wants to return to the post he held in 2003-2010.<\/p>\n

Later, da Silva said he had never used Independence Day for electoral ends.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrazil needs better luck. It needs a government that takes care of people. A person who talks about harmony, love, economic growth, industrialization, job creation, pay increases,\u201d da Silva said. \u201cBrazil needs love, not hatred.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other presidential candidates also criticized Bolsonaro\u2019s electoral use of the country\u2019s independence bicentennial, and party leaders have suggested they will take the case to electoral courts.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a rally after the parade in Brasilia, Bolsonaro made no reference to Brazil\u2019s struggle for independence and instead focused on his achievements while his supporters made clear they came to support their candidate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe came for democracy, we want a free country, with no corruption or robbing, we want a country with clean elections,\u201d said farmer Marcelo Zanella, 46, who drove some 800 kilometers (496 miles) from the state of Tocantins.<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands also gathered on Sao Paulo\u2019s main downtown boulevard. Due to a downpour and the fact Bolsonaro wasn\u2019t scheduled to appear, turnout was apparently smaller than last year\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Later, Bolsonaro attended another military display in Rio along Copacabana beach \u2014 where his supporters often hold demonstrations. It entailed rifle salutes, cannon fire, flyovers, paratroopers and warships anchored offshore. He delivered his speech from a sound truck, on the back of which a draped banner read: \u201cCLEAN AND TRANSPARENT ELECTIONS.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro, a former army captain and lawmaker for decades before winning the 2018 presidential election, has spent most of his first term locking horns with Supreme Court justices, some of whom are also top members of the electoral authority.<\/p>\n

He has accused some judges of hamstringing his administration and favoring da Silva. That has effectively turned those figures and their institutions into enemies for Bolsonaro\u2019s base.<\/p>\n

When Bolsonaro launched his reelection bid July 24, he asked supporters for \u201cone last\u201d show of support on Independence Day.<\/p>\n

Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo, said Bolsonaro needed to energize his campaign and reach out to undecided voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe needed something new and failed to do that. Bolsonaro once more only spoke with his supporters, indeed many of them, and with that the window might be closing for other voters to join him,\u201d Melo said.<\/p>\n

Since his campaign began, Bolsonaro has softened his tone. In the southern city of Curitiba last week, he told supporters to lower a banner demanding a military coup.<\/p>\n

Carlos Ranulfo de Melo, a political scientist at Federal University of Minas Gerais, said this likely reflects campaign strategy to avoid fiery rhetoric and instead focus on the improving economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will convince those who think differently from us, we will convince them of what is best for Brazil,\u201d Bolsonaro told the crowd in Brasilia.<\/p>\n

The president is known for off-the-cuff outbursts<\/a>. At last year\u2019s Independence Day rally, he pushed the country to the brink of an institutional crisis<\/a> by proclaiming he would ignore rulings from a Supreme Court justice. He later backtracked, saying his comments came in the heat of the moment, and the boiling tension<\/a> was reduced to a simmer.<\/p>\n

In both speeches in Brasilia and Rio, he made a couple veiled critiques of the Supreme Court, which elicited boos from the crowd.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe institutional wear-and-tear was present in his speech in Brasilia, but in a less explicit way than last year,\u201d said Rafael Cortez, who oversees political risk at consultancy Tendencias Consultoria.<\/p>\n

\n

There had also been concerns about political violence, which didn\u2019t materialize during the afternoon.<\/p>\n

In Rio, it was a scene of adulation. Sound trucks blasted songs exalting Bolsonaro to a crowd packing multiple blocks of the beachside boulevard, spilling onto the sand and down to the waterline. Motorboats and jet skis floated just offshore. When the first paratroopers started gliding down, one group began chanting, \u201cLegend!\u201d, a nickname for the president.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came to honor my president,\u201d said Myleni Lima, 50, from the city\u2019s west zone. \u201cI\u2019m going to reeelect him, me and the Brazilian people.\u201d<\/p>\n

– Carla Bridi and Mauricio Savarese, AP News<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brazil\u2019s President Jair Bolsonaro transformed the nation\u2019s bicentennial Wednesday into a multi-city campaign event, but didn\u2019t use his appearances to undermine the upcoming election as his opponents had feared. Bolsonaro, who trails former President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva in polls before the Oct. 2 vote, drew tens of thousands of supporters to rallies in Brasilia and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":7900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/afs-prod\/media\/6f03842137204a04a7853d2f75af2c1c\/1000.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"Bolsonaro Turns Brazil\u2019s Bicentennial into Campaign Rally","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polity-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7899,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7897\/revisions\/7899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}