Bolsonaro allies pass cloth to coup – 05/09/2023 – Politics

Allies of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) did more than turn a blind eye to the current situation of the former president by honoring him with honorary titles and supporting him with public statements amid investigations into coup attacks and embezzlement of jewels.

According to social scientists interviewed by the Sheetcaresses go further: they represent a “passing of the cloth”, an attempt to minimize the seriousness of crimes committed against the democratic rule of law.

“The posture of these politicians who pose next to Bolsonaro, who honor him and praise him is, to use the popular, a coup plotter”, says political scientist Cláudio Gonçalves Couto.

In recent weeks, the former president received three honorary citizenship titles: from Goiás and Minas Gerais, in the respective Legislative Assemblies, and from Barretos (SP), in the City Council of the city.

In addition, he heard public praise from Ricardo Nunes (MDB), mayor of São Paulo, who thanked the former president for his work in relation to the capital and declared that he wanted Bolsonaro’s support in the 2024 municipal election.

The question is how the electorate will react to these gestures, which tend to be remembered all the time in the election, says Couto, who is a professor at the Department of Public Management at FGV Eaesp (São Paulo School of Business Administration at Fundação Getulio Vargas).

For Couto, the electoral calculation behind this type of movement is imprecise in the case of mayors and governors, but accurate for deputies and councilors.

The difference is that candidates for these positions in the Legislative need to please only a certain niche of the population; that is, they manage to be elected only with the votes of Bolsonaristas.

Whoever intends to command the Executive, on the other hand, needs the majority support of the voters. And, as the most recent Datafolha survey showed, 68% of respondents say they do not vote for the candidate nominated by Bolsonaro in the São Paulo election.

“[Aproximar-se de Bolsonaro] it is a relatively risky strategy for the moment he lives. After the pandemic, after the 8th of January and the attacks on institutions during the electoral process, the case of jewels comes, without any pun intended, to crown this situation”, says Couto.

Gabriel Ávila Casalecchi, who is also a political scientist, considers that Bolsonaro’s strength in public opinion should not be underestimated, despite the fact that he was declared ineligible by the TSE (Superior Electoral Court).

Professor at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), Casalecchi believes that politicians from the Bolsonarist field will try to benefit from the political capital of the former president, especially on conservative issues, while at the same time moving away from toxic points.

“Our society is mostly conservative. But not all conservatives are authoritarian”, says the UFSCar political scientist.

Even for that reason, in his view, politicians who use Bolsonaro’s support will refuse the coup speech at all levels. That is, they will reject support for anti-democratic movements and will deny that the former president was a coup leader.

“If you ask Bolsonaro himself, analyze the interviews he gave, he never poses as someone who intended to carry out a coup”, says Casalecchi.

“On the contrary, he says he acted within the four lines, as mandated by the Constitution. He has already hinted that the abuse does not come from him, but from the institutions”, completes the political scientist.

For the UFSCar professor, the danger of tributes and praise is there: within the conservative sectors, they help to create an idea that Bolsonaro has not done anything serious.

“No one says they are going to carry out a coup. On the contrary, everyone swears they love democracy. So authoritarianism is dressed in a democratic language and undermines institutions from within and through discourse,” says Casalecchi.

For political scientist Camila Rocha, this attempt to normalize the coup is very serious and is at variance with the vast majority of voters, who condemn the January 8 attacks.

“It’s one thing for someone to claim to be conservative and defend certain moral values; it’s another thing to defend a coup d’état”, says Rocha, who is a researcher at Cebrap (Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning) and a columnist for Folha.

Only, when it comes to Bolsonaro, the two dimensions get mixed up – quite a problem for candidates who would not like to see themselves identified with anti-democratic acts.

“Nunes tries to run away from that. He is very slippery”, says the political scientist. The mayor of São Paulo, when he praised Bolsonaro, sought to distance himself from judgments by stating that he is neither a judge nor a policeman.

In the assessment of the Cebrap researcher, Nunes is keeping an eye on TV time and the PL machine, which can help to give capillarity to the campaign with structures in the periphery and sympathy of churches.

Another point that may be of interest not only to Nunes but also to other politicians who are close to the former president are the values ​​he represents.

“The figure of Bolsonaro itself is very worn out due to the scandals, but what everyone says is that the values [conservadores] are still important,” says Rocha, who since 2019 has been conducting surveys to understand how voters of the former president think.

Anthropologist Isabela Kalil adds another factor to this contradictory equation. Despite Bolsonaro having plummeted in the digital popularity rankings after the scandals, no politician will relinquish his support before knowing what will actually happen.

She cites as an example the case of João Doria (former PSDB), former governor of São Paulo who was elected with the BolsoDoria double, had a praised performance in the pandemic and fell in disgrace after taking off from the former president.

“It was bad for him not only from the point of view of the electoral calculation itself, thinking that that voter who voted for Doria stopped voting because he came to be seen as a traitor, but also because of the Bolsonarist attacks, which is not little thing”, says Kalil.

Coordinator of the Extreme Right Observatory, Kalil says that the international scene also reinforces the adoption of a posture that goes to the limits of ambiguity.

In the United States, for example, Donald Trump, who had a much more direct involvement in the attacks on the Capitol, appears as a very real possibility in the race for the presidency.