Opinion – Vinicius Torres Freire: Bolsonaro’s coup will not come: it just continues

Jair Bolsonaro’s coup has been underway at least since the beginning of 2020. It was made explicit at the ministerial meeting on April 22 of that year, as seen in the video published by order of the STF. The coup’s progress is evident in the fact that a criminal like Bolsonaro can commit crimes of responsibility serially and with impunity. It doesn’t even get sued for it.

Now, people from Brasilia say that requests for lawsuits against the latest anti-democratic vomitory will not only go nowhere, bidu, but it’s not convenient for them to go anywhere. At the moment, according to this thesis, it would be like giving leash to the conversation that there is a conspiracy, an attempt to cancel Bolsonaro’s candidacy, a real and declared fear of the element that occupies the chair of President of the Republic.

That is, in the end, best left alone, in a kind of tactical resignation.

However, in this way, the coup campaign progresses, the political situation deteriorates and the way is open for the next attempt to ruin democracy. Everything happens as if, in the absence of the institutionalization of the coup (a formalized authoritarian order), the democratic order does not disappear. But it fades. Bolsonaro, at least so far, operates through the deactivation of the institutions of democracy, state, etc.

The Attorney General’s Office does not exist for the purposes for which it is intended. The Federal Police was dismantled. With other immediate objectives, Health, Education, Ibama, Funai, Revenue, Coaf or Itamaraty were lobotomized or transformed into propaganda agencies.

Congress has become an instrument of the party, in the broad sense, of the centrão. Yes, it is obvious that governing majorities vote with the government. But the Congress under the regency of centrão-bolsonarismo became an instrument of dismantling or appropriation of the State, of the vale-tudo, of the legal avacalhação, of the legislative regiment to the Constitution.

To stay in office, Bolsonaro gave the Chamber what remains of the appearance of government, which, in the hands of Arthur Lira (PP-AL) and other accomplices, is a crude means of perpetuating power.

It is said that there will be no coup in the strict sense. First, because the Armed Forces would not be interested or would be afraid to take over a divided country or they would no longer be adept at old-fashioned dictatorship. Second, because the parliamentarians themselves would not have an interest in demoralizing the polls that took them to Congress or fear the loss of powers in a “tout court” dictatorship.

Suppose, for mere optimistic exercise, that things are that simple. Bolsonaro has no scruples and will continue his coup campaign.

If he is capable of any rational calculation, he can give up on barracks or violent popular uprisings if these subversive attacks do not have enough power to give Bolsonaro what he wants. But the stench of blackmail, of threat, increasingly stinks the air.

At the last minute, Bolsonaro may try to exchange the threat of trouble for a deal, with Congress, with the Supreme Court, with everything. The delinquent and his general accomplices would go unpunished, with amnesty, in retreat, to reorganize troops and return to the attack as soon as possible.

The “legalist” generals would bargain for the continuity of the rich mouth and the military tutelage would remain, a little as it happened at the beginning of the so-called New Republic, which would be even more dead in this eternal state of siege, under the permanent threat of the Bolsonarista Huna horde unpunished.