How Brazil’s political unrest reached a violent crescendo months after a contentious election

Brazil is reeling after supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed Congress, the presidential palace and the Supreme Court on Sunday, vandalizing the premises in a rebuke to newly sworn-in President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Lula, as he is commonly known, was inaugurated on January 1 after defeating Bolsonaro in an election in October, one of the most important – and controversial – in the country’s democratic history.

Bolsonaro is a far-right politician, supported by Donald Trump, who promised economic growth and criminal activity during his presidency and downplayed the COVID-19 pandemic. Lula, of the leftist Workers’ Party, is a longtime politician who presided over a period of economic growth and poverty reduction as president in the 2000s, before he was nearly ruined by corruption charges.

The attack on Brazilian institutions comes after months of increased violence and organization by the Bolsonaristas, and anti-democratic rhetoric from Bolsonaro himself – compounded by broader anti-Lula sentiment, experts say.

Bolsonaro has repeatedly fueled distrust in the electoral system

After Lula’s narrow election win, Bolsonaro’s supporters began camping outside military bases in support of the coup, demanding that the country’s armed forces intervene and restore Bolsonaro to the presidency.

The camp in the country’s capital, Brasilia, included thousands of protesters at one point.

Since late October, Brazilian truck drivers have blocked roads in support of Bolsonaro, and other supporters have called for military intervention. But the skepticism toward Brazilian institutions from the former president’s far-right partisans began long before Bolsonaro’s loss, observers say.

“I think a lot of the groundwork was done beforehand [the election] it actually happened,” said Michelle Bonner, a professor of political science at the University of Victoria.

Bolsonaro was stirred up don’t believe in the country’s electronic voting machine during the presidency. In July 2021, the former president said that they cannot accept the results of the 2022 election under the current voting system, claiming without evidence that they are vulnerable to fraud.

“If this way continues, they will have problems,” Bolsonaro said in an interview, according to Reuters. “Because one side, which is our side, may not accept the result.”

He made these remarks a month before the election. These comments are in stark contrast to criticism made by Bolsonaro in 1993 – then a congressman – that the paper voting system is flawed and should be digitized. The machine is currently in use in 1996.

WATCH | Brazilian police arrested more than 1,500 people:

Brazil’s voting authorities haven’t met yet any evidence to suggest that the current system – when it does not leave an auditable trail as a paper vote is not – it is penetrable. But a month after his defeat, Bolsonaro called for many electronic ballots to be cancelled.

“Bolsonaro has legitimized the authoritarian discourse of defending anti-democratic solutions for the country during his tenure,” Lucio Renno, a political science professor at the University of Brasilia in Brazil, told CBC News.

Bolsonaro too raised doubts in 2020 on the legitimacy of US president Joe Biden who won the election from former president Donald Trump – a few months before the January 6 uprising took place in Washington, DC, an event that some say parallels Monday’s event in Brasilia.

History of Lula’s hostility

Before the latest win, Lula – what a class labor union — was president for two terms from 2003 to 2011 and a central figure in Brazilian politics. His career almost ended in disgrace after corruption charges led to a lengthy prison sentence in 2017.

But the cost they were cancelled in 2021, clearing the way for another presidential candidate.

“There has actually been a very long history of hostility towards Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva … that goes back to when he first became president in 1989,” said Hendrik Kraay, a history professor. at the University of Calgary.

Another incident of violence began as Lula’s path back to the presidency has been legitimized by state institutions. When the final vote was tabulated, Bolsonaro, without clearly mentioning the coup, made no concessions about his political losses.

On December 12, after Lula’s victory was certified by Brazil’s electoral court, pro-Bolsonaro supporters tried invade federal police headquarters in Brasilia.

Brazilian police later arrested at least four people on December 29 for allegedly attempting a coup, a day before Bolsonaro flew to Florida to serve out the rest of his presidential term.

He was not at Lula’s inauguration on Jan. 1, an event that included a ceremonial handing over of the presidential belt: a nearly 40-year-old democratic tradition in Brazil, designed to “legitimize the democratic process,” Bonner said.

This is another step taken by Bolsonaro to light the fire, “without actually clearly telling his supporters to carry out this struggle,” he added.

Renno, at the University of Brasilia, called the violent protests “a very sad historical moment for Brazil.”

“It is the first time that we have something of this magnitude by a politically organized movement invading public buildings and causing damage to public property, in an attempt to destabilize the democratic regime in the country,” he said.

Kraay, who studies the social, political and cultural history of the South American country, said he is not pessimistic about the strength of Brazil’s democracy.

“Yes, there are strong anti-democratic groups in Brazil, [an] anti-democratic factions on the right who have tried to disrupt the elections,” he said.

“But the truth is, Brazilian institutions have lived a good life.”