Analysis. Let it be said: after a year in office, almost daily polemics and scandals, Jair Bolsonaro is tired ! Thus, his agenda sent to the press for December 21, 22 and 23 did not include any official meeting. But that was clearly not enough to lower the pressure. The day before Christmas Eve, just a few days before 1st January, the anniversary of his takeover, the Brazilian head of state slipped into his bathroom and badly hit his head. Assessment: one night in the hospital, a small memory lapse … but no consequences.
"It’s hard to be president of Brazil", Jair Bolsonaro told the press a few days earlier. It is true that nothing in the world predestined him to hold such positions. The son of small "Ritals" in the distant suburbs of Sao Paulo, a junior officer excluded from the army and a far-right ultramarginal deputy, mocked by his peers for three decades, Mr. Bolsonaro was by no means a man of power . And even less of a statesman.
Revenge at heart, the reserve captain therefore sounded the charge against the hated "system", with more fury and noise than any other leader on the planet: serial lies, racist or homophobic remarks, scatophile and misogynistic jokes , conspiratorial delusions, apology for torture and dictatorship, insults towards foreign leaders… Enough to get MM. Trump and Salvini for courteous gentlemen or kind social democrats.
It's hard to imagine that such a storm could last until the end of his mandate in 2022, or even more. Especially since Brazilian politics is full of surprises. Since the advent of the Republic in 1889, a third of the country's thirty-eight presidents have been unable to complete their term due to illness, suicide, renunciation, coup, various scandals or more or less dismissals less legal.
Circles of influence
And yet, it would be wrong, from Europe, to see in this captain Bolsonaro only a picaresque general Alcazar, product of a transient tropical fever, quickly caught, quickly treated, quickly forgotten. It would be to underestimate the character and what he represents. It would be to ignore the deep existential crisis that Brazil is going through today.
The troublemaker Bolsonaro may well be here to stay. First because he is no longer a marginal person. By a spectacular tour de force, the deputy of the “low clergy” who became president of the ninth world power managed to gather around him some of the most powerful circles of influence in Brazil: Evangelical churches, military and police lobbies, conservative media, industry and agribusiness barons, as well as large parts of the justice and banking sectors. Despite the scandals, all are united around their president. With these supports, the current power is anything but fragile. It is located at the equilibrium point of the deep state Brazilian.
