"World" editorial. There is, no doubt, something rotten in the kingdom of Brazil, where the president, Jair Bolsonaro, can assert without fussing that the coronavirus is a "Grippette" or a "Hysteria" born from"Imagination" medias. Something rotten, when in the crowd, urges local authorities to lift restrictions and claims epidemic "Start to go away", while cemeteries across the country record a record number of burials. When his Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ernesto Araujo, defends the "Comunavirus", claiming that the pandemic is the result of a communist plot. When health minister Nelson Teich resigned on May 15, four weeks after his appointment to this crucial portfolio, to "Differences of opinion", the day the country reaches 240,000 confirmed cases and more than 16,000 deaths.
For many, the dark hours in Brazil, now the fifth nation most affected by the pandemic, are reminiscent of those of the military dictatorship, when the country was subjected to fear and arbitrariness. With a significant difference: while the generals claimed the defense of a democracy attacked, according to them, by communism, Bolsonaro's Brazil inhabits a parallel world, a theater of the absurd where facts and reality do not exist more. In this tense universe, nourished by slander, inconsistencies and deadly provocations, opinion is polarized on a cloud of simple but false ideas.
The denial maintained by the government dissuades half of the population from confining themselves, while the calls for physical distancing launched by health professionals, governors and mayors are only moderately followed up. Economic activity must continue at all costs, said Bolsonaro, who is struggling above all to take the measure of the pandemic while making an insane political calculation: the devastating effects of the crisis will be attributed to its opponents, he hopes.
Sanitary chaos
A junior officer expelled from the army and an obscure far-right deputy, mocked by his peers for three decades, Bolsonaro was not a statesman. Coming to power, consumed by bitterness and brown nostalgia, the ex-reserve captain kept ringing the charge against the hated "system". A posture which, during an acute pandemic, causes health chaos and sows death.
By cheating on the facts, populist rulers end up believing their own lies. We see it elsewhere in the world. But here, in this country that emerged barely twenty-five years ago from the dictatorship, where democracy remains fragile, even dysfunctional, the fact of politicizing an excessive health crisis in this way is totally irresponsible.
With a base of 25% of voters, Bolsonaro knows that its room for maneuver is narrow. Some people today evoke the scenario of an institutional coup. In front of the crowd who came to support him in Brasilia, the president made it clear on May 3 that, if the Supreme Court investigated him or his relatives, he would not respect the judges' decision. After practicing historic Holocaust denial by praising the dictatorship, denying the existence of the fires in the Amazon and the gravity of the Covid-19 pandemic, Bolsonaro and his authoritarian temptation risk leading the country into a dangerous headlong rush.
