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Over 800,000 Brazilians Sign Pro-Democracy Manifesto Amid Bolsonaro Coup Threat
The proclamation, published by the University of Sao Paulo School of Law, asserts that "the solution to the immense challenges facing Brazilian society necessarily involves respect for the results of the elections. In civic vigil against attempts at ruptures, we cry out in unison: Democratic rule of law, always!"
The letter, which never mentions Bolsonaro by name, is set to be read on Thursday--National Student's Day--at what's being billed as a national mobilization across Brazil in defense of democracy and free elections and against cuts in education spending.
Groups including Unified Workers' Central (CUT), the country's main national trade union center, plan to hit the streets in at least 21 of Brazil's 26 state capitals, as well as in the national capital Brasilia.
"There is nothing more important than defending democracy and elections," CUT president Sergio Nobre told Reconta Ai. "CUT will support all initiatives, manifestos, and actions taken in defense of democracy, the electoral system, and electronic voting machines."
Bolsonaro has often cast baseless aspersions upon Brazil's electronic voting system, which has been in use since 1996 without evidence of irregularities.
Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva--a member of the leftist Workers' Party--leads Bolsonaro by 10 points in aggregate polling for the first round contest, which will take place on October 2. Da Silva's aggregate lead rises to a formidable 17 points in runoff round surveys.
Democracy defenders fear that Bolsonaro and his running mate, former Defense Minister Walter Braga Netto, will be true to their threats to reject the results of the election if they lose under the current electronic voting system.
"We are going through a moment of immense danger to democratic normality, of risk to the institutions of the republic, and of insinuations of contempt for the results of the elections," the new manifesto warns.
The publication continues:
Groundless attacks unaccompanied by evidence question the fairness of the electoral process and the democratic rule of law so hard won by Brazilian society. Threats to other powers and sectors of civil society and the incitement to violence and the breakdown of the constitutional order are intolerable.
We have recently witnessed authoritarian rants that have jeopardized secular American democracy. There, attempts to destabilize democracy and the people's confidence in the fairness of the elections were unsuccessful. Here, they won't be either.
"Imbued with the civic spirit that underpinned the 1977 Letter to Brazilians... we call on Brazilians to be alert in the defense of democracy and respect for the election result," the document's authors implore. "In today's Brazil there is no more room for authoritarian setbacks. Dictatorship and torture belong to the past."
"We have recently witnessed authoritarian rants that have jeopardized secular American democracy."
Brazilian lawyer and former Justice Minister Jose Carlos Dias helped write both the new manifesto and the 1977 Letter to Brazilians, a denunciation of the U.S.-backed military dictatorship that had ruled the country since seizing power in a 1964 coup supported by the CIA and the administration of then-President Lyndon B. Johnson, who ordered a naval task force to Brazil for possible intervention.
The dictatorship--during which Bolsonaro, an army paratrooper, rose through the ranks--ruled through state terror and torture, which was taught by U.S. agents using political prisoners as test subjects. Victims included future leftist President Dilma Rousseff, whose torturer, as well as the dictatorship itself, have been praised by Bolsonaro.
Just as the 1977 letter added fuel to the flames of resistance that eventually brought down the dictatorship and ushered in a transition to democracy, Dias believes the new manifesto can make a difference today.
"I lived under one dictatorship and I do not want to live under another," the 83-year-old toldThe Guardian. "Brazil is in intensive care. We have an utterly deranged president who... pays homage to torturers and dictators. We face the risk of having to live through a dictatorship once again--and this is inconceivable."
"The polls show [Bolsonaro] will be defeated. But there's no doubt that he's laying the groundwork for a coup," Dias asserted.
"It's my belief that he wants to repeat what happened in the Capitol in the United States," he added, a reference to the deadly January 6, 2021 insurrection spurred by then-U.S. President Donald Trump's "Big Lie" that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by Democrats.
The new Brazilian proclamation follows a July 26 manifesto signed by more than 3,000 business leaders including some of the nation's wealthiest people defending the country's electronic voting system.
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Earlier in July, a group of Brazilian Jewish academics, jurists, and politicians published a proclamation calling on voters to "defeat Nazi sympathizers" by voting for da Silva in the first round, for "if there is a second round, [Bolsonaro] points to the possibility of a military coup."
Bolsonaro has dismissed signatories to the manifestos--who include da Silva, Rousseff, and many of Brazil's most popular and respected figures--as "cock-faced" and "without character."
"I won't use other adjectives," he said during a speech to bankers on Monday, "because I'm a very polite person."
House Dems Call for Suspension of Aid if Brazilian Military Attempts Election Coup
"It calls for the discontinuation of security assistance," an insider with knowledge of the measure told Mier. Such assistance to Brazil consists mostly of joint military exercises and six-figure financial support. U.S. President Joe Biden has requested $800,000 in international military education and training funds for Brazil next fiscal year.
The unnamed insider characterized the proposed NDAA amendment as "basically a way of saying, 'you need to consider whether these actions amount to a coup because, if so, that would necessitate cutting off U.S. assistance.'"
As Bolsonaro and his allies continue their unfounded attacks on the integrity of Brazil's electronic voting system, recent polls show him trailing former leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva--who is running for the office again after being cleared of corruption charges last year--by double digits.
Bolsonaro, who decades ago declared his intention to stage a coup if he was ever elected president, has said he may not accept the results of the election if he loses under the current voting system.
His running mate, Walter Braga Netto, recently told a group of Brazilian business leaders that the armed forces will not honor the results of October's election unless the Superior Election Court changes the ballot system.
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The last time there was a military coup in Brazil--many progressive observers consider the 2016 impeachment and ouster of former President Dilma Rousseff, also of da Silva's leftist Workers' Party, a political coup--it was backed by the United States.
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a naval task force to the South American country as far-right elements of the Brazilian military deposed Joao Goulart, the democratically elected president, and his progressive government. Two decades of military dictatorship followed. The regime's forces were trained--including in torture--by U.S. agents.
Bolsonaro, a former army paratrooper who rose through the ranks during and after the dictatorship, has repeatedly praised the brutal regime, under which tens of thousands of people were tortured, murdered, and disappeared. He also infamously honored as a "national hero" a former army officer who tortured Rousseff when she was a young resistance fighter.
While serving as Bolsonaro's defense minister, Braga Netto--who rose to the rank of army captain during the dictatorship--once released an official statement arguing that the 1964 coup should be "understood and celebrated."
Marcelo Rubens Paiva--a Brazilian writer whose father, Rubens Paiva, was disappeared by the military dictatorship in 1971--tweeted earlier this week that Bolosnaro chose Braga Netto as his running mate "not to raise or aggregate votes, but to consolidate his power, with someone obedient and allied to a coup."
A group of Brazilian Jewish academics, jurists, and politicians this week published a manifesto calling on voters to "defeat Nazi sympathizers" by voting for da Silva in the first round, for "if there is a second round, [Bolsonaro] points to the possibility of a military coup."
"Bolsonaro made it very clear that he is not just any extremist," they wrote. "In his statements, he showed his contempt for women, Blacks, Indigenous people, LGBT+, and all minorities, and his willingness to fight--if possible to destroy--everything that was not in accordance with their militia lifestyle and pining for fascism."
The manifesto cited Bolsonaro's "deconstruction of human rights, salary squeezes and high prices, [and] contempt for science--which officially claimed the lives of almost 700,000 people" during the Covid-19 pandemic.
It also notes the return of hunger--which was largely eradicated during the Lula and Rousseff administrations--the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and murder of its Indigenous inhabitants and defenders, and the "gradual strangulation" of the press.
"We have reached the point where all of this can change," the statement's signers asserted. "The elections are approaching, although the militiamen--street or digital--organize themselves to silence the polls and the justice system."
"The polls will be the battleground and the vote our weapon," they added. "We have the obligation and the challenge to defeat fascism."
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