I don’t think the election was rigged in the sense that the vote was fraudulent, but it was the last phase of a 3-stage constitutional coup. The problem for the elite who have governed Brazil from time immemorial was the immense popularity of President Lula, whose government took millions out of poverty, particularly in the rural North-East. They could see that, if Lula ran again for President, they might be out of power indefinitely. Firm commodity prices helped to cushion Brazil from the impact of the 2008 financial crisis, and serious economic problems only surfaced during Dilma’s Presidency. Dilma was an unbending, stubborn, overbearing and incompetent President, who was quite incapable of forging the political alliances that are always necessary because of the fragmentation of parties in Brazil (plus she was deliberately obstructed by Congress in her attempts to resolve the economic problems). This all created the background to her impeachment. Bolsonaro gave one of the many examples of his monstrous inhumanity when he voted to take Dilma’s impeachment to the Senate. He dedicated his vote to Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, who as Head of the DOI-CODI (an investigation division of the army generally considered to have been responsible for 502 deaths under his administration) was responsible for Dilma’s torture during the military dictatorship. Phase2 of the coup was the prosecution of Lula for corruption. He probably was corrupt, but there was no evidence to link him to the apartment he was supposed to have corruptly acquired – certainly no evidence that would have stood up in a UK court. Brazil has a primitive criminal justice system, of a type which used to be (but is no longer) common in a number of European countries, in which the same judge is both in charge of the investigation and responsible for trying the case. Add to that the blatant political bias of the Judge, Sergio Moro, and the dirty tricks to which he resorted (amongst other things disclosing to the media an unauthorised wire tap of a phone conversation between Lula and Dilma) and Lula was always going to be convicted. Lula’s appeal against Moro’s decision was a farce. The president of the Federal Regional Appeal Court pronounced before the hearing that Moro’s decision was “impeccable”. The three judges came to the appeal with their judgments already written. The wheels of the Brazilian justice system grind very slowly, but in Lula’s case everything moved at lightning speed. Why? So that, convicted and having lost his appeal, he would be ineligible to stand in last month’s election. Meanwhile other prominent politicians, such as Aecio Neves, whose involvement in corruption (plus allegedly other more serious crimes) is much more obvious and large-scale than Lula’s, remain free men. The difference is that Judge Moro is a political associate of Neves. Political corruption is endemic in Brazil, but the right have managed to persuade the masses that somehow under the Workers Party it was far worse. Meanwhile the secular trend towards ever-increasing violence in society (over 63,000 homicides last year) has produced a yearning for “law and order”. The resultant rejection of the Workers Party, and indeed of almost all establishment politicians has created the conditions for a fascist, racist, homophobic misogynist maverick to assume the Presidency. He represents landed interests, and will destroy Amazonia, and dispossess indigenous peoples of their protected areas, to increase cattle and soya production. His law and order solution is to kill the criminals, and allow citizens to keep arms to protect themselves. This will only exacerbate the problem of violence. The problem has its roots in inequality, and Bolsonaro’s policies will greatly increase inequality. And now we come full circle in the constitutional coup. Judge Moro has accepted an invitation to be Bolsonaro’s Minister of Justice. Just a few days before the first round of voting in the Presidential election Moro released details of the plea bargain of Antonio Palocci, a Minister in both Lula’s and Dilma’s administration, with the obvious intention of further discrediting the Workers Party. It didn’t take him long to get his reward. The trouble is that the judicial system is scarcely less corrupt than the politicians, so that the theoretical separation of powers doesn't work very well. One fears that the constitutional checks will be inadequate to curb the worst instincts of the President. If you think Trump’s bad news, just watch Bolsonaro.

Entire Thread

Topic	Date Posted	Posted By
This is terrifying!	01/11/18 21:21:00	Rima Jones
Re:This is terrifying!	01/11/18 21:53:00	Claire Moran
Re:Re:This is terrifying!	02/11/18 00:14:00	Robert Fish
Re:Re:This is terrifying!	02/11/18 00:36:00	Robert Fish
Re:This is terrifying!	02/11/18 01:15:00	Tony Smart
Re:This is terrifying!	02/11/18 10:36:00	Richard Greenhough
Re:Re:This is terrifying!	02/11/18 16:56:00	Richard Cathcart

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