'Horror show': critics hope Bolsonaro's foul
tirade could end rule
Brazilians horrified by lack of focus on Covid-19,
which has now killed more than 21,000
Tom Phillips in
Rio de Janeiro
Sat 23 May
2020 20.08 BSTLast modified on Sun 24 May 2020 09.13 BST
Jair
Bolsonaro swore 34 times during a two-hour cabinet meeting some think could
help bring his four-year term to a premature end.
“If [the
left] had taken power in 1964 we’d be fucked,” Brazil’s pro-dictatorship
president proclaimed at one point.
After a
video of the session was made public that painted a wretched portrait of
Bolsonaro’s far-right administration some believe that he now is – in the
mid-term at least.
“A horror
show,” tweeted Marina Silva, a one-time presidential rival, after she, like
much of Brazil, watched the expletive-ridden footage. “The whole of Brazil has
now seen the sinister entrails running the country … This cannot go on.”
The video,
which is at the centre of a potentially presidency-ending investigation into
claims Bolsonaro tried to meddle in the federal police, was divulged on Friday
after a supreme court ruling. It shows a cabinet summit at the presidential
palace on 22 April – and a carnival of cusswords and conspiracy.
Bolsonaro
emerges as Brazil’s curser-in-chief, uttering 34 swearwords, according to local
reports. “These bastards are after our freedom – that’s why I want the people
to arm themselves,” Bolsonaro declares at one point.
“Oh just
fuck right off. I was the one who chose this bloody team,” Bolsonaro later
grumbles about a lack of media praise for his leadership.
Elsewhere
the rightwing populist rejects criticism over his flouting of social distancing
guidelines. “A bad example my arse,” Bolsonaro snaps, before apparently
confusing the word “hemorrhoid” with either “hegemony” or “hemorrhage”.
On a fourth
occasion, which could have serious implications for his presidency by providing
potential grounds for impeachment, Bolsonaro seems to confirm claims from his
ex-justice minister Sergio Moro that he sought to shield his family from
investigation by meddling in the federal police.
“I’m not
going to wait for them to fuck my whole family or my friends just for shits and
giggles,” Bolsonaro says. Nineteen of the president’s relatives are reportedly
facing police scrutiny, including two sons, although Bolsonaro denies that is
the case.
Bolsonaro’s
coarseness made front-page headlines but many were most horrified by the lack
of focus on Covid-19, which has now killed more than 21,000 Brazilians. “On the
day of the meeting Brazil had already suffered nearly 3,000 Covid deaths – and
the issue simply wasn’t raised,” said Sônia Bridi, an author and broadcaster.
“This just shows how we’ve been abandoned by the federal government during this
pandemic.”
One of the
only ministers to raise the crisis was environment chief Ricardo Salles who
suggested it had distracted the press and provided good cover to enact highly
controversial changes to environmental legislation.
“The
minister’s words are criminally opportunistic – to take advantage of the fact
that the country is facing a pandemic to advance this agenda of environmental
destruction,” said Flávia Oliveira, a columnist for the newspaper O Globo.
Another
source of alarm was an authoritarian outburst from Bolsonaro’s education
minister, Abraham Weintraub, who branded supreme court judges “punks” who
needed jailing.
Bolsonaro’s
human rights minister, Damares Alves, raised the spectre of a supposed plot to
contaminate indigenous people in the Amazon with Covid-19 in order to
“decimate” their villages and discredit Bolsonaro.
Bridi said
the video had left her feeling ashamed: “We don’t use this kind of
‘presidential’ language in my house, and my parents didn’t allow it either.”
“But more
than shame I felt sadness,” Bridi added. “They have no plan for the country –
and the country is now in the hands of people who are worse than unqualified.”
Brazil was witnessing “the empowerment of stupidity and ignorance”.
Oliveira
said she had been repulsed at Bolsonaro’s “egocentric, shallow and offensive”
show. “What you see is a government that isn’t in the slightest bit engaged
with the most pressing issue, not just for the country but for the whole
planet.” Was it any wonder Brazil had been “plunged into this spiral of death,
illness, inefficiency and incompetence” when this was the group in charge?
But one
thing had come as a relief to Oliveira, who is one of Brazil’s leading black
voices. Bolsonaro’s all-white and almost entirely male cabinet contained not a
single Afro-Brazilian face. “The lack of diversity is shameful … But thank
goodness my black brothers and sisters aren’t part of this. Thank goodness the
indigenous are not involved. It gives me the chills to say this but thank
goodness this isn’t our work. It’s the work of those who have always had a
supremacist and destructive vision of Brazil.”
Bolsonaro
celebrated his vulgarity as proof he was a man of the people. “Is there
swearing? Yes,” he told reporters. “I’m sorry – if you don’t like it vote for
some boring suit next time.”
Monica de
Bolle, a Brazil specialist from the Peterson Institute for International
Economics in Washington, said the video was part of “a horror film that is
playing out in real time”. “None of what was said is unexpected. All of it is
shocking,” she said.
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