If he visits Portugal, which Jair Bolsonaro has not yet been able to do, contrary to what happened to almost all previous presidents after redemocratization, he will be very well received. No demarcations, affronts, strangeness, cancellations, charges or insults.
The two countries will continue to like each other, regardless of who governs them, and a visit by the Brazilian president to Portuguese lands would be important, not least because, as Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa underlined, peoples are always more important (and lasting) than their representatives.
These days it would be even more important for Bolsonaro to visit Portugal. For many reasons that interest both countries: there are more and more Brazilians there, they do more and more business, generate more and more jobs, attend more and more universities and, therefore, they need, as never before, for the Portuguese to feel them. like true brothers.
But also because the more than 500 thousand (Brazilians and Luso-Brazilians) who live there would like their maximum representative to visit them. And among them there are certainly many supporters who would even like to see him there. Even Itamar Franco, the only one who did not visit Lisbon as a tenant of the Planalto, running the year 1995, as soon as he left Brazil handed over to Fernando Henrique, soon wanted to be ambassador in Lisbon.
It is easy to accept that the profession of “president” in a continental country like Brazil, even more so in a presidential regime with these characteristics, is a task for heroes, but that does not excuse occasional moods, last minute impulses or truculent feelings. Swallowing frogs (big and small) is part of the liturgy of the position that Bolsonaro occupies and creating political facts from tantrums, lightheartedness or bad jokes harm the international image of Brazil and even that of the pre-candidate.
It is understood that in the midst of an electoral dispute as important as the one Brazil is now experiencing, tempers are running high, but treating the president of Portugal with disrespect is a bad idea.
It is true that Bolsonaro speaks almost exclusively to his electoral base, which is constituted – as Datafolha shows – fundamentally by more male, white, heterosexual, old, rich and educated voters, but even among these it will be difficult to find many people who do not like it. of Portugal or the president of the Portuguese. Statistics prove just the opposite.
Canceling the “chicken with farofa” to President Marcelo plays against Bolsonaro’s re-election pretensions. It really is a shot in the foot. Because among the indefects of the current president, there are many who like Portugal, admire the president of the Portuguese and are even a little envious.
And God only knows how she grows.
