Top rightwing Brazil newspaper demands removal of
Bolsonaro
Call comes as outrage over Covid and corruption drags
president’s ratings to lowest ever level
Tom Phillips in
Rio de Janeiro
Sun 11 Jul 2021
16.58 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/11/top-brazil-newspaper-demands-removal-of-jair-bolsonaro
One of
Brazil’s leading conservative newspapers has demanded the removal of the
country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, as public outrage over his coronavirus
response and corruption dragged the rightwing populist’s ratings to their
lowest ever level.
“Jair
Bolsonaro is no longer in a position to remain in the presidency,” O Estado de
São Paulo declared on Sunday as polls showed that for the first time a majority
of citizens backed impeachment and considered their leader incapable of
governing.
Bolsonaro,
a former paratrooper and an admirer of Donald Trump, took office in January
2019, using social media to portray himself as a corruption-busting
anti-establishment maverick who had come to drain Brazil’s swamp. Critics have
long questioned that image, pointing to incessant accusations of low-level
corruption and mafia ties that have dogged Bolsonaro’s family.
The anger
appears to have spread across Brazil’s electorate in recent weeks, largely
thanks to an unfolding scandal over allegedly corrupt Covid vaccine deals and
Bolsonaro’s handling of the country’s Covid-19 outbreak, which has killed more
than 530,000 people.
“This is
Jair Bolsonaro’s worst moment. He’s melting and the idea people have of him is
melting,” said Eliane Cantanhêde, a political columnist for O Estado de S
Paulo, who said a congressional inquiry had laid bare the president’s “crass
and preposterous” pandemic response.
Another
major newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, said on Saturday that Bolsonaro, who has
faced a wave of recent protests, was suffering “a full-scale image meltdown”.
The
newspaper’s polling division, Datafolha, said 54% of Brazilians thought he
should be impeached, up from 49% in May, and 63% believed him incapable of
governing, up from 58%. Most voters considered their president “dishonest,
insincere, incompetent, unprepared, indecisive, authoritarian and dim”, Folha
said.
Perhaps
most worrying for Bolsonaro was the finding that 59% of voters would not back
him under any circumstances in next year’s election, when he hopes to secure a
second four-year term.
Datafolha’s
poll suggests the leftwing former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva would
trounce Bolsonaro in the 2022 race, with a 20-point gap between the two. “It
will be the Brazilian people who free themselves of Bolsonaro,” Lula told the
Guardian recently after regaining his political rights.
Growing
rightwing calls for Bolsonaro’s impeachment seem partly driven by conservative
angst over Lula’s return. Some on the right opposed to the president believe
the only way to block the leftist’s path to power is to oust Bolsonaro and
confront Lula with a less divisive rightwing candidate.
Bolsonaro
appears to be feeling the heat, apparently trying to distract from the Covid
crisis and corruption allegations with a series of anti-democratic outbursts in
which he has groundlessly questioned Brazil’s voting system.
“Either we
have clean elections or we won’t have elections,” Bolsonaro declared last week
before calling the head of the superior electoral court an imbecile.
“Everything
is going against Bolsonaro and he’s reacting badly,” Cantanhêde said, adding
that it was unclear whether his attacks on democracy were “merely ranting” or
part of a genuine plot to cling to power with the support of some elements of
the armed forces.
O Estado de
S Paulo, which did not oppose Bolsonaro’s election despite his long history of
anti-democratic rhetoric, savaged that “explicit threat” to Brazil’s democracy.
It called the president “a spoiled child … bedevilled by a succession of moral,
political, criminal and administrative misfortunes”.
“The
threats to our institutions and democracy must stop,” the broadsheet said,
urging the head of the lower house, Arthur Lira, to start impeachment
proceedings, something analysts believe remains unlikely.
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