President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) hinted this Thursday (23) that Colombians want to leave the country after the electoral victory of leftist Gustavo Petro.
“Colombia has just elected an M19 guerrilla, similar to Dilma Rousseff. That’s about what, six days. What is the most sought after public service in that country, does anyone know? Passport sector. Can’t you understand what’s happening? “, Bolsonaro told supporters at Palácio da Alvorada.
The president did not mention, however, that the increase in demand was actually due to the volume of searches on the internet, not necessarily in the issuance of passports. Colombian portals reported the growth last Sunday (19), when Petro was declared president-elect.
The Google Trends platform, which displays search data on specific topics, shows that in the last seven days there has indeed been an increase in searches related to passports made by Colombian Internet users. It is not possible to say, however, that the peak of interest in the topic has any direct relationship with the election.
Petro, who is in fact a former guerrilla, on Sunday became Colombia’s first leftist president. Vice President Hamilton Mourão and Itamaraty congratulated the Colombian, but Bolsonaro has not officially spoken about Petro’s victory – which, in practice, extends the isolation of Brazilians in Latin America.
During Bolsonaro’s speech, one of the president’s supporters mentioned the abstention rate in the second round of the Colombian election — 44%, a high rate but the lowest in the last two decades. According to Bolsonaro, voters who stopped going to the polls, in a country where voting is not mandatory, “will pay the same bill as everyone else”.
The Brazilian also criticized Petro’s decision, once elected, to release young people arrested for protests in the country. “The president there said he’s going to release the boys. Basically, he’s a drug trafficker. Generally, those who are in the drug trade are people of this age group, even younger, because they are unimputable.”
In 2021, protests in the neighboring country left more than 60 dead, of which at least 59 were civilians, generating a series of accusations of human rights violations by state agents. Bolsonaro compared the Colombian’s statement to a 2018 statement by Lula, in which PT criticized the detention of 14- and 15-year-olds for stealing cell phones.
The president used a similar tone to criticize the electoral victory of other left-wing presidents in South America, such as the Argentine Alberto Fernández and the Chilean Gabriel Boric. It is common for Bolsonaro to resort to an alleged threat of socialism and communism, which he uses synonymously, to try to justify his political demonstrations against left-wing leaders.
In conversation with supporters on Thursday, he also made fat-phobic comments about dictators Kim Jong-un and Nicolás Maduro. “It’s not a joke what I’m going to say. You can see in communist countries, usually the head of state is a fat man. Look at North Korea, isn’t it a chubby? Look at Venezuela, isn’t it a chubby?”. Bolsonaro also used Maranhão as an example, ruled by Flávio Dino (PSB), who left the PCdoB (Communist Party of Brazil) this year.
This isn’t the first time the president has mentioned the physical shape of the governor and others in a derogatory tone. Bolsonaro was even sued for racism for claiming that quilombolas weighed “seven arrobas” in 2017. Last month, the Attorney General’s Office asked for the action to be closed.
