The year in which Brazil pretended to return to ‘democratic normality’ – 12/27/2023 – Vinicius Torres Freire

Brazil is returning to “institutional normality” or “democratic”, reads several reports from this 2023. Most of the time, this judgment is moderated by the gerund.

Still, it is a question of optimism, naivety, an attempt to cover the sun with a sieve or complicity with the current stage of the arrangement of this democracy that is more perverted than usual.

It is clear that we no longer have a coup president. More than that, the government seeks to overcome the greatest barbarities of the dark years (2019-2022) and has a program to guarantee or expand constitutional rights, modest in ambition, political creativity and weak in practice.

It’s difficult to go further. The social, economic and political disaster he inherited is enormous, there is much to do. Furthermore, the government’s political bloc is the most minority in redemocratization. That’s how it is in Congress. This is because of the size of the electorate on the other side of the trenches, the regional dominance of conservatism, the size of anti-left sentiment, etc.

That said, this democratic crisis that has been going on since at least 2014-15 continues. It was only a year ago that Bolsonarists tried to blow up Brasília airport, people who were confabulating terrorism in front of the Army Headquarters.

As we know, it was also from there that the bulk of the coup gang that vandalized the headquarters of the Powers came from. This is anecdotal evidence of the popular dissemination of the coup program.

Other coups were conveniently forgotten. A large part of the electorate tacitly supports him — only 8% of Jair Bolsonaro’s voters in 2022 regret their vote, says Datafolha.

The military supporting Bolsonaro’s tyranny project slipped away. The process of crony generals is barely progressing. The Armed Forces, the Army in particular, would have “returned to the barracks”, although they do not even admit that they left there.

They left, which became scandalous after General Villas Bôas sharpened the bayonet in the STF’s investigations in 2018, when ministers were dealing with a habeas corpus for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The military’s participation in the coup plan and institutional destruction was extensive.

How many will go to jail? How long will the “return to the barracks” last? Until 2018, there was the illusion that the soldiers had democratically retired to their barracks. In practice, there is another amnesty for the authoritarian chaos.

Congress launches several reprisals against the Supreme Court. In itself, the idea of ​​pushing STF ministers back to their barracks is not a bad idea. The politicization and exorbitances of the court have only increased in the last decade and a half.

But the motives of the center-right are also other, very bad ones: revenge against the Justice that rightly condemned parliamentarians and the desire to hinder constitutional powers (such as the constitutionality trial).

In pororoca, there is indignation against “progressive” decision plans (abortion, marijuana, indigenous land) and others that limit the shameless use of money (amendments).

The STF was a fortress against the authoritarian intentions of Bolsonarism. It was in a way a dirty war; the Supreme fought with the weapons that were available, but exceptional, in a bad sense. Furthermore, it is not new that it manages agreements and the pace of processes in order to influence the political game.

What is the status of Bolsonaro’s lawsuits, his family and his associates? Full members of the power system, these people now have another kind of privileged forum: they are judged according to the political convenience of the moment, good or bad. The court bites and blows according to its needs and discretion.

Sleep with a normality like this. And there is a lot more noise.

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