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NY Times Op-Ed, June 3, 2020
Bolsonaro Is Bizarre. But He Knows What He’s Doing.
Brazil’s president doesn’t need to centralize power to get his way.
By Miguel Lago and Alessandra Orofino
RIO DE JANEIRO — More than 30,000 deaths. Widespread social devastation.
Overwhelmed hospitals. An economy on the precipice of disaster. In
Brazil — the worst-hit country in South America, a new epicenter of the
coronavirus — the situation is dire.
And yet its president, Jair Bolsonaro, lives in another reality.
The virus is “a little flu,” about whose spread he can do nothing other
than to recommend chloroquine as a miracle cure. Now on his third health
minister, Mr. Bolsonaro seems to actively oppose the measures of his own
government. He has appeared at anti-lockdown protests and fulminated
against state governors who adopted quarantine measures. Far from taking
control, Mr. Bolsonaro has reveled in chaos.
His behavior, even viewed from President Trump’s United States, is
bizarre. A military man with a long history of praising the dictatorship
that held the country in its grip for over 20 years, Mr. Bolsonaro could
have used the epidemic to seize more power — following in the footsteps
of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, for whom the crisis was the
perfect opportunity to secure greatly expanded powers.
But he hasn’t. Instead, Mr. Bolsonaro has screamed from the sidelines of
a country he nominally rules. It’s tempting to dismiss his behavior as
so much weirdness. But the truth is more disturbing: Mr. Bolsonaro knows
what he’s doing.
In Brazil, the president’s authority is limited in a number of ways.
First, there’s the Supreme Court, ready to check any overweening moves.
Then the composition of Congress, fractured into a host of small
parties, forces heads of state into intricate arrangements and
concessions. Mr. Bolsonaro, who is currently without an official party,
has many allies in Congress — but not a solid majority.
What’s more, state governments are almost entirely free to set and carry
out their own public policies, especially on health care and public
security. In its regional and parliamentary complexity, Brazil’s
political system makes it difficult to wield outright executive power.
But not impossible. The country’s sheer size — 27 states spread across a
land mass bigger than Australia — and relatively young democracy,
emerging from dictatorship in 1985, have led to a dispersed, uneven
political system with many centers of authority. This allows for
subversion: Rogue individuals within institutions can abuse their
influence and official roles, often for ideological ends. These are the
individuals Mr. Bolsonaro speaks to directly, fanning his agenda across
the country while sidestepping the constraints on his power.
The results speak for themselves. A pro-Bolsonaro district attorney sued
a doctor for conducting a disappointing trial study on the use of
chloroquine. Military police officers in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo,
who officially answer to their respective states, protected
pro-Bolsonaro protesters who actively broke the governors’ social
distancing orders. And an employee of a government ministry assaulted
and spat at nurses protesting for better working conditions.
Mr. Bolsonaro has allies in positions of power within civil society,
too. Evangelical pastors, who routinely speak about the president in
messianic terms, have refused to close their doors to the public.
Illegal loggers have invaded Indigenous land in the Amazon, claiming
that the president will legitimize the land grab sooner or later. And
the country’s truck drivers, who are thought to have held meetings with
Mr. Bolsonaro, have threatened to stop working if quarantine policies
are not lifted by state governors, raising the terrifying prospect of
empty supermarket shelves.
In all of these cases, individuals in institutions or networks took
action autonomously, without answering to higher authority. Part of the
digitally driven movement that elected Mr. Bolsonaro, they listen to his
frequent dog-whistles — or, in many instances, direct exhortations — and
then take matters in their own hands.
Some of what they consume is available to public scrutiny, on open
platforms like Twitter or YouTube. But some of it is shared only
privately through WhatsApp. And it appears to come from high places:
Content can often be traced back to the president’s inner circle — or
even to Mr. Bolsonaro himself. In February, he shared a particularly
dramatic video urging his supporters to protest against Congress.
That episode underlined something important: Mr. Bolsonaro relies on the
country’s institutions to defy him. Without their defiance, he can’t
fire up his supporters. And the coronavirus crisis has supercharged his
tendency toward antagonism. Seeing a situation from which no good could
come, Mr. Bolsonaro seems to have decided the path to political safety
lies in refusing responsibility for the pandemic’s toll — and keeping
his base in a state of frenzied anger. So he calls for protests, attends
public barbecues and turns a blind eye as his followers openly harass
journalists.
For all his bombast, Mr. Bolsonaro doesn’t want to be seen to be in
charge. He prefers to tell an underdog story of a lone wolf fighting
against the powerful establishment, relying on an energetic base of
support to maintain his position. He is perhaps the world’s only
strongman who likes to project an image of weakness, not strength.
None of this is inconsistent with Mr. Bolsonaro’s own history. As a
young soldier, he was accused of rebellion and almost kicked out of the
Army. And he has often praised individuals who acted outside official
chains of command. His biggest hero, by his own account, is someone who
took that approach to an unspeakable extreme: Col. Carlos Alberto
Brilhante Ustra, the only person ever held officially responsible for
torture under the dictatorship.
The hideous practice, though widespread in the 1960s and ’70s, was not
officially recognized by the generals that presided over the country.
But Colonel Ustra pursued it vigorously. Mr. Bolsonaro, who never misses
a chance to pay his respects to Colonel Ustra and his family, took note.
His entire presidency is based on the premise that there are many Ustras
hidden within powerful institutions and spread out across society, ready
to turn his suggestions into practice.
Many expect the world after the pandemic to follow one of two paths:
either increased authoritarianism, with top-down control and centralized
surveillance, or more distributed power, based on solidarity and serving
local needs. But Mr. Bolsonaro proves that authoritarianism can exist
even when power is dispersed.
It is unclear whether his approach will be sustainable. Outwardly, his
position seems to have been weakened. But so far, he has been able to
govern without taking responsibility for governing — his every comment
finding an eager listener, his utterances as powerful as policy.
Mr. Bolsonaro doesn’t need centralized surveillance: His followers are
his eyes, ears and teeth. And they’re biting.
Miguel Lago is a lecturer at Columbia University and co-founder of
Nossas, a network of activism and civic engagement in Brazil, where
Alessandra Orofino is executive director.
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