MG supermarket chain is accused of electoral harassment; watch video

A supermarket chain from Minas Gerais is accused of committing electoral harassment on behalf of Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

The complaint took shape after a meeting held on Wednesday (26) in a hotel in Itajubá (MG), under the command of Marcos Alvim and Cibele Maglioni, owners of the Alvorada Supermarket. The mayor of the city, Christian Gonçalves (DEM), was invited to speak and, in front of dozens of contractors, made a speech in support of the president, who is running for reelection.

At the meeting, recorded by one of the workers, Gonçalves asked for a “22 vote” to prevent the president’s rival in the second round, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), from claiming that PT would transform Brazil into Venezuela and free abortion and drugs. —the PT campaign has no proposals in this regard.

The video of the meeting was used by a local councilor, Pedro Gama (PV), to file complaints with the Public Electoral Ministry and the Public Labor Ministry against the mayor and the owners of the chain, which has 17 stores in the south of Minas, on the same day. .

In the pieces, Gama accuses Gonçalves of telling “several lies, seeking to coerce employees to vote for the candidate Bolsonaro”.

In a social network, the mayor says he is the target of “frivolous accusations” and says he will take “appropriate measures against left-wing politicians who try to curtail” his right to expression.

THE Sheet sent messages and called the company, but was unable to reach the owners of Alvorada.

In the lecture in question, the mayor stated that the PT, if victorious, would usurp employees’ working days to finance unions. Lula has already declared that he is against the return of the union tax, extinguished in the 2017 labor reform.

Gonçalves said that the PT’s plan now is to subtract “two and a half days from your salary, from your sweat”, to irrigate the unions. There is no party proposal on this.

The complaint presented to the Labor and Electoral Justices says that Alvorada workers left their jobs and went to the hotel to participate in an alleged training. Arriving there, they came across the mayor’s speech, with high political tension.

Gonçalves told them that Lula “doesn’t say that, but he defends abortion, he defends the liberation of drugs, he defends a series of issues that he doesn’t talk about.” She then proposed: “I wanted you to reflect, evaluate and think”.

It suggested that the current president has flaws but is the best option at the table. “Is Bolsonaro spectacular? No, he talks a lot of nonsense, there’s a lot I disagree with him. But I’m not going to marry him, guys.”

Right at the beginning of his speech, the mayor asked if anyone knew what the result of the first round had been in Roraima, a state that borders Venezuela. He recalled that Bolsonaro won by hand there – he had 69.5% of the votes – and said that this happened because people fear the “Venezuelization” of the country under a Lula government.

He stated that in the neighboring country there are “people picking up food from the garbage, to the point of eating their own pets because they have nothing to eat”, and that “a large part of the Venezuelan people are leaving there, and they want to put it here in our Brazil”.

The recordings of his speech began to circulate on the internet, and Gonçalves made a post to defend himself against what he defines as “a video of the left accusing me of an electoral crime”.

“I want to tell you that I have, yes, manifested myself”, he says. “Actually, that’s what bothers us, the mayor of the city of Itajubá having taken sides in favor of our Brazil.”

He does not address the fact that the accusation refers to the fact that the demonstration took place at a meeting for employees, which can characterize electoral harassment.

“Extremely serious is what these leftist politicians want to do with our Brazil and our Itajubá”, he continues. For the mayor, what he did was just express his “constitutional right, as a citizen”, to defend Bolsonaro.