"Only not he": Women of Brazil against the presidential candidate
MASSED WOMEN'S MARSH HAS PASSED IN BRAZIL IN MINUTE DAYS The rally participants, under the slogan “Just Not He” (“Ele Não”), which gathered tens of thousands of people in the country, protested against ultra-right Congressman Zhair Bolshonar, one of the favorites of the current presidential race in Brazil. The first round of elections should take place as early as next Sunday, and many of the Brazilians who took to the streets the day before are seriously worried that a reactionary and populist whom they consider to be a “sexist and fascist” can become at the helm of the country. These fears are not groundless: Brazil has been torn apart by a political crisis for many years, and Bolsonard, a former military man who promises to restore order with an iron hand, has quite a few supporters.
The main woman-hater in a democratic world
The initiator of the action "Only Not He" was the online group "Women united against Bolsonar" ("Mulheres Unidas Contra Bolsonaro"), which since its inception has gathered 3.8 million participants. The presidential candidate who received the testimony of "the most misunderstood politician of the democratic world" is not popular among women: a recent survey by the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics (Ibope) showed that 36 percent of men willing to vote for him 18 percent of women. Such a gender imbalance in political polls can be found relatively rarely, although in the case of Bolsonar it is hardly surprising.
For almost four decades of his political career, a former army officer managed to change several parties (for the presidency, he comes from the conservative Social Liberal Party). Only his nostalgia for the military dictatorship of 1964-1985 and the aggressive demagogy aimed at women, Brazilians of African descent, LGBT people, immigrants and the indigenous population of the country remained unchanged.
Going to the polls under the slogan "Brazil is above all, the Lord is above all", Bolsonar stands for "traditional family values", which in his understanding means a ban on abortion and LGBT marriage (the homosexuality politician equated to pedophilia). He also advocates a tightening of immigration policy, more free circulation of weapons in the country and the return of the death penalty. In economics, he supports the principle of the free market and advocates for privatization, which, however, does not agree well with his longing for the times of dictatorship.
Operation Car Wash and Power Crisis
In March 2014, a so-called Operation “Car Wash” began in Brazil, a large-scale investigation of corruption schemes involving dozens of high-ranking politicians and representatives of the business elite. Investigators found that Petrobras, the state-owned oil and gas company, provided major contracts to construction companies in exchange for kickbacks - the money went to the accounts of not only Petrobras top managers, but also the leaders of the then ruling party of the country, the Workers Party.
One of the main defendants in the case was the former president of Brazil, Lula da Silva: in July 2017, he was sentenced to nine and a half years, and in April 2018 was deprived of state immunity and sent to prison (by that time, his sentence had increased to 12 years) . Equally important, the scandal has affected his successor, President Dilma Rousseff, who served as chairman of the board of directors of Petrobras in 2003-2010. In August 2016, she was removed from power by declaring impeachment, the legitimacy of which has been disputed so far.
Operation Carwash, which struck hard against their reputations, called the Labor Party a political conspiracy to overthrow the legitimately elected government. In August 2018, the party nominated Lula da Silva as a presidential candidate, despite the fact that by that time he had been in prison for four months: the rating of seventy-two-year-old politician in Brazil still remains very high and, according to analysts, he could win the current election in the first round. However, in late August, the High Electoral Court deprived Lula of the right to be elected, citing the law of an “immaculate past,” which prohibits candidates convicted of corruption from running for office for eight years. Instead, the Workers ’Party hastily nominated Fernando Haddad, the former mayor of Sao Paulo, but his rating is much lower.
The scandal that lasted for four years and the ensuing confusion led to the fact that the overwhelming majority of Brazilians lost confidence in the current political system. A survey conducted by Latinobarometro about a year ago showed that the credibility of the country's government fell below 10 percent. Therefore, it is not surprising that the residents of the country — especially those who, because of their age, did not find the regime themselves — even more often speak of the regime of military dictatorship as an occasion when there was order in the country. After the fall of the dictatorship in the late eighties, many documents relating to this era have not yet been declassified and made public, and therefore it is much easier to idealize it as a "golden era". What the ultra-rightists are actively using, whose face Bolsonar has recently become: the interrogations with the use of torture practiced during the dictatorship, he called “permissible”.
Latin American Trump
Bolsonar is sometimes called the "Latin American Donald Trump." Comparison, although somewhat strained, is not without reason, and it’s not just a matter of commonality on many issues and promises to make Brazil great again. The odious congressman in advance accused his opponents from the Workers Party of falsifying the elections and declared that he did not recognize any other voting results, except for his victory. And as in the case of Trump, it is difficult to say where Bolsonar’s own views end and trolling begins with the aim of annoying the “left wing” as much as possible and thereby gaining sympathy from the conservative-religious part of Brazil. It is clear that his extremely harsh statements make him the most controversial political figure in the country.
In April 2018, the Prosecutor General’s Office accused the congressman of inciting hatred: Bolsonar criticized quilomb laws, historic settlements created by runaway slaves of African descent, and added that their residents, “should not even have reproduction rights.” Similar rhetoric from the mouth of a presidential candidate or simply a high-ranking policy in Brazil four years ago would have been unthinkable, but since then the mood in the country has changed a lot. The lower the trust in institutions of power falls, the higher the degree of public anger rises.
On September 6, during the election campaign in Juis de Fora, Minas Gerais, Bolsonard was assassinated. A forty-year-old man named Adeliu Bispu de Oliveira pounced on him with a knife and inflicted a heavy wound. The attacker explained his act by the “will of God”, stating that the police would not understand his motives. On September 29, Bolsonar was discharged from the hospital. It is unlikely that before the first round he will be able to personally participate in election campaigns, but few analysts believe that everything will be decided in the first round - for this, one of the eight current candidates must get more than half of the votes.
A week before the election, Bolsonar continues to lead (28 percent of the voters are on his side), but his closest rival Fernando Haddad managed to noticeably reduce the backlog (he now has 22 percent). The fact that they will be in the second round of elections, scheduled for October 28, is obvious to almost all Brazilians - including those who last weekend called for voting for anyone but Bolsonar.
