The body was found in the shade of a mango tree. In the state of Mato Grosso, a supporter of the president Jair Bolsonaro repeatedly stabbed a supporter Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva after an argument. Proof of the political violence that gripped Brazil in the run-up to the October 2 elections.
“He showed no signs of remorse,” said the police chief investigating the murder of the main suspect, an angry lumberjack who “disliked leftist views of the victim”. The assassination of Benedito Cardoso dos Santos, which took place in a remote Amazonian town, shocked the country. But President Bolsonaro, known for his radical rhetoric, did not issue any statement on the crime, while opponents accuse him of have promoted the toxic political climate where the elections will take place.
During the last elections, when Bolsonaro himself was stabbed, he called for supporters of Lula’s Workers’ Party to be “machine-gunned.” And after gaining power, he promised a cleaning up “red outlaws”.
“The country is advancing towards a savagery that we have never known before,” former President Lula da Silva, a favorite according to the polls, warned last week. “Bolsonaro and Bolsonarismo foment violence politics with an intensity that Brazil has never seen,” supported Alexandre Padilha, deputy for the state of São Paulo and a key member of Lula’s campaign team.
“Bolsonaro promotes hatepromotes the extermination of his adversaries and Bolsonaro has distributed weapons throughout the country,” added Padilha, noting how the number of registered weapons had skyrocketed to almost 2 million thanks to the relaxation of the laws to acquire them, by the president. .
A debate that was put at the center of the campaign two weeks ago when the judge Edson Fachinof the Federal Supreme Court (the same one that in March 2021 annulled the sentences issued against former President Da Silva by the federal justice of Paraná within the Lava Jato anti-corruption operation), put arms sales restrictions with one ruling: it issued precautionary measures against the release of the sale of firearms due to the risk of “political violence”.
“I don’t agree with Mr. Fachin at all,” Bolsonaro said. during an interview. “Political violence? All dictatorships were preceded by campaigns to disarm the population, ”said the president, who since his arrival in government in 2019, promulgated decrees to make the carrying and purchase of weapons more flexible. In response to Fachin, his son Eduardo Bolsonaro proposed through a series of messages on Twitter, the formation of groups of armed civilians. “Did you buy a legal weapon? Do you attend a shooting club? Then you have to become a Bolsonaro volunteer. Ask your candidate for federal deputy for president’s stickers and pamphlets, distribute them,” the deputy wrote.
Eduardo Bolsonaro’s call was addressed to the so-called ACC group (hunters, sports shooters and collectors), which according to data published by the newspaper Folha, reached one million members last July. The growth of the CAC was 187% compared to 2018: at the end of July they had registered 1,006,725 weapons, compared to 350,683 in 2018. “We want firearms for good citizens. Do not forget that armed people never they will be enslaved. There’s a thief out there who dreams of coming back to disarm his people”, Jair Bolsonaro had pronounced in April during a speech.
For Edson Fachinin opposition, “the electoral campaign exacerbates the risk of political violence”, and “the need to restrict access to weapons and ammunition“, wrote the magistrate of the Federal Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Brazil.
According to the court, only “people who concretely demonstrate their effective need” can have weapons, one of the rules that Bolsonaro made more flexible by decree. Fachin justified having made the decision “in light of the recent and unfortunate episodes of political violence.” A warning of the climate in which the vote will take place in Brazil, where the opposition sees the echoes of the defeat of donald trump in the United States: the North American president questioned the result and his supporters they took by force in Capitolio.
In early August, more than a million Brazilians from across the political spectrum signed a manifesto warning that democracy faced a moment of “immense danger”. “I have full confidence in the electoral system in Brazil. That doesn’t mean it’s infallible either. But I am sure that, as the president says, the people will have their opinion”, supported Ciro Nogueira, chief of staff of Bolsonaroclearing doubts.
And Lula predicted that the president would have no choice but to accept defeat, as his American ally was forced to do in practice. donald trump after losing to the Democrat Joe Biden. “It’s a bad copy of Trump,” Lula described her right-wing rival. “Trump also tried to avoid accepting the result. They tried to storm the Capitol. But he had to back down and I am sure that here in Brazil the election results will be accepted without any question”, he concluded.
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