Editorial: Chaos in Brazil

Democracies of the world must act to make clear there will be no support for right-wing insurrectionists.

Hyderabad: The chaos in Brazil demonstrates how power-drunk dictators and their unhinged supporters can hold their own country to ransom if the public mandate in a democratically-held election goes against them. The supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro went berserk on the streets of Brasilia, storming the presidential palace and the buildings of the National Congress as well as the Supreme Court. The hooligans hit the streets, unable to digest the defeat of their leader in the election which saw Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, widely known as Lula, coming to power. The rioting started a week after Lula was sworn in. There are uncanny parallels between the scenes in Brasilia and the attack on the US Capitol by the supporters of Donald Trump on January 6, 2021. Bolsonaro, the right-wing former president of Brazil, had for months sought to undermine the results of an election that he lost, in much the same manner that Trump did after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. The supporters of Bolsonaro are seeking to overturn the results of Brazil’s election and restore the former president to power. Similar to the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the mob that descended on the Brazilian capital overpowered police at the perimeter of the building that houses Congress and swept into the halls of power. Bolsonaro’s supporters railed online about a supposed “communist takeover” – exactly the same type of rhetoric that drove the rioters in Washington two years ago.

In another parallel with the Capitol riot, some supporters of the former president attempted to shift the blame by pinning the storming of government offices on outside agitators or supporters of President Lula. The dramatic scenes saw thousands of protesters, some clad in yellow Brazil football shirts and waving flags, overrun police and ransack the heart of the Brazilian state. Throughout his term, Bolsonaro had repeatedly questioned the efficacy of Brazil’s institutions – accusing the Supreme Federal Court of being politically against him, and the voting system of being prone to fraud, despite no evidence to support those claims. The chaos is a new low for democracy in South America, a continent notorious for its dictatorships and autocracies. The Brazilian authorities are under fire for neither learning a lesson from the US Capitol invasion nor pre-empting a similar incident in their own country. What happened in the US two years ago had its genesis in the ‘baseless’ allegations made by Trump regarding the conduct of the 2020 presidential election. It seems that Bolsonaro took a leaf out of Trump’s book to whip up trouble. India, which enjoys good ties with Brazil both bilaterally and as a fellow member of the BRICS group, has rightly condemned the anarchic developments. Democracies of the world must act fast to make clear there will be no support for right-wing insurrectionists.

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