With elections in Brazil around the corner, my concerns about how the current President will behave in relation to the results becomes more latent.
Jair Bolsonaro commits several atrocities daily, such as attacking the country’s institutions, offending women, and accusing the same electoral system that elected him in 2018 as fraudulent, threatening with the use of military force not to surrender office in the event of defeat next Sunday.
Unfortunately, the list doesn’t stop there… Bolsonaro and his family are involved in several scandals of embezzlement and purchase of dozens of properties with cash, and like former US President Donald Trump, he uses social media to spread fake news.
However, even more serious is the amount of lives lost due to his lack of management of the Covid-19 pandemic, such as the purchase of vaccines and the support for hospitals in poorer regions.
I confess that I still cannot understand the phenomenon of people who are attracted to authoritarian leaders and populist government leaders who resemble fascism and even nazism, after so many examples in history.
Some are even democratically elected, but then use the state machine to try to maintain or perpetuate themselves in power.
Known names for authoritarism today are Viktor Orbán, in Hungary; Recep Erdogan, in Turkey; Vladimir Putin, in Russia; Xi Jinping, in China; Nicolás Maduro, in Venezuela; Donald Trump, in the USA; and Jair Bolsonaro, in Brazil.
Again, John Oliver nailed it with a video about the Brazilian president.
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