Brazil Enter the last week of election campaign with a scene of violence that portends storms in a strongly polarized country and in a situation of virtual technical tie in the polls between the president Jair Bolsonaro y Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the Workers’ Party (PT). Roberto Jeffersona far-right ex-deputy with leafy causes of corruption on his back and, at the same time, an open Bolsonaroism, was confronted with gunshots rifle and grenades with the Federal Police when trying to arrest him on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Two soldiers were injured. Bolsonaro tried to distance himself from the situation and said he did not know Jefferson. The images of both shaking hands and smiling did not take long to circulate on social networks. Lula tried to capitalize on the fact by recalling Bolsonaro’s long-standing association with promoters of political violence. The growth of the retired captain’s intention to vote since the first round was played casts a cloak of doubt on the possibility that this incident will change the preferences at the polls on October 30.
Jefferson was in rigor serving a house sentence since August 2021 in the context of a cause that is followed by an alleged criminal organization that operated on social networks to attack democracy. On one of his legs he wears an electronic anklet. The president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Alexander de Moraess, ordered his arrest after the former legislator described the Minister of the Supreme Court (STF) in a video. Carmen Lucia from “prostitute”. The police went looking for him, but numerous supporters of the Government came out in defense of Jefferson, shouting “immoral Alexandre will not silence us” and “freedom”.
Jefferson believed that he was going to find greater support than that of the sympathizers and that is why he assured that he would not turn himself in to the security force. “Enough, I’m tired of being a victim of arbitrariness, abuse. Unfortunately, I will face them”. The PF was able to verify that, until the moment of handing him over, Jefferson fired twenty shots and two grenades.
The president’s embarrassment
“Roberto Jefferson has just been arrested. The treatment given to those who shoot a police officer is that of a bandit. I offer my solidarity to the police officers injured in the episode,” said the president, and tried to distance himself from the former deputy. “There is not a single photo of him with me, nothing,” Bolsonaro said. The opposite was soon proved.
The PT leader considered that Jefferson’s reactions represent a risk for Brazilian democracy. “The political aberration in this country has a face and a name”. For Lula, these actions are fed by the discourse of Bolsonaro himself who, he said, “He achieved that in this country there is a social sector that lies and spreads fake news all day”. The PT candidate in turn made reference to the recent event in which former minister and deputy-elect Marina Silva was harassed by Bolsonarists. “It is against this that the people must speak out at the polls. We cannot try to annihilate those who do not agree with us.”
The political cost
“The case of Roberto Jefferson short-circuits the Bolsonaro campaign,” said Bela Megale, a columnist for the Rio de Janeiro newspaper The globe. According to Bruno Boghossian, a columnist for Sheet of Saint Paul, the extreme right made an “effort to damage control” so that the Jefferson case does not splash the candidate for re-election. Bolsonaro, he added, tried to detach himself from the grenade launcher but without stopping harassing the Supreme Court by speaking of “investigations without support in the Constitution”. The confrontation with the STF It is “a central element for Bolsonaro in this election,” recalls the columnist. the retired captain accuses the ministers of the main judicial instance of favoring Lula and calls on the population to react. In turn, he has charged against the TSE, questioning the transparency of the elections, suspecting that he could return to the forefront if the retired captain is defeated.
According to Ricardo Kertzman, a columnist for Istoé magazine, the “attempted assassination of federal police officers” by Jefferson, “idol and guru of Bolsonarism”, is just “one more chapter in this horrible ongoing story, with no end date”. The former deputy has become “the face and voice of an important part” of the sympathizers of the extreme right, “including Bolsonaro himself,” who “always supported and applauded hate speech.”