“Tens of thousands of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters gathered in the country’s biggest cities for demonstrations on Tuesday aimed at galvanising support for the populist leader. The rallies, which took place in the capital, Brasília, and financial centre São Paulo, came as Bolsonaro fired up his base in recent months with an aggressive campaign against several Supreme Court justices, whom he accuses of overstepping their authority.The former army captain has also heaped doubt on Brazil’s electronic voting system, saying it is prone to fraud, and threatened to cancel elections next year if the system was not amended to include printed paper ballot receipts.
The tense political atmosphere has stoked fears that the rallies may descend into violence or that demonstrators may storm the Supreme Court in an echo of the assault on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump this year. On Sunday, federal police arrested a supporter of the president who made death threats against Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice. Moraes drew Bolsonaro’s ire after he ordered the president to be investigated as part of an inquiry into “fake news”. Police have also expanded the security detail for Luís Roberto Barroso, another justice who has repeatedly clashed with Bolsonaro over the president’s unfounded claims of voter fraud.”
Ughhh!Originally published tn
The Financial Times (from which I borrowed the title)
https://col3neg.org/pro-bolsonaro-rallies-put-brazil-on-edge/
Comments
That parade photo in the article’s a classic … Ain’t it?
You might
enjoyappreciate this clip from Cabaret. We know where it all ended up. Only a few at the time sensed the impending disaster.