Thousands of Brazilians took to the streets in their cars to demand the impeachment of Jair Bolsonaro, while polls showed support for the far-right president, who escaped control of the coronavirus pandemic.
On Saturday, when Covid-19’s official death toll in Brazil reached 216,000, demonstrators from the left and center organized marches in more than 20 state capitals, including Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte and Belém.
Leftist Guilherme Boulos said objectors parading through São Paulo the demonstrations signaled the beginning of “a popular revolt against this genocidal government”.
“We are here to announce that we are not going to wait until [the next presidential election in] 2022, because lives are at stake. Now is the time to defeat Jair Bolsonaro, ”Boulos told dissidents stuck in the car. “He’s going to leave the presidency and go straight to jail.”
On Sunday, right-wing groups held their own pro-impeachment events, including in Barra da Tijuca, Bolsonaro’s bastion of support in western Rio.
An online petition promoted by former conservative supporters drew more than 180,000 signatures in three days. “President Bolsonaro is a curse for Brazil and … it is up to us, the people, to ensure its removal,” he says, accusing the president of putting thousands of lives at risk with his anti-scientific response to Covid.
Lucas Paulino, a lawyer who helped organize a rally in Belo Horizonte, said the protesters were driven by the horrible collapse of the health system that took place hundreds of kilometers north of the Amazon. In the past few days, dozens of patients have died in Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas, after an outbreak of infections in Covid and a catastrophic lack of planning has caused hospitals to run out of oxygen. Brazil’s Minister of Health, Eduardo Pazuello – whose critics call him “Pezadello” (nightmare) – traveled to the city only to promote false “early treatments”, such as hydroxychloroquine.
“It really showed us the extent of the federal government’s abandonment of duties and denial of the Covid pandemic,” said Paulino, 32, regional leader of a progressive political group called Acredito.
“The feeling that this neglect, this anti-democratic extremism, this denial of science, this omission, this glorification of authoritarianism can no longer continue, was stuck in the throat of many Brazilians,” added Paulino.
Political journalist João Villaverde, columnist for Época magazine, said that the drive-by demos – the first significant external mobilizations since the beginning of the pandemic – suggested that opposition to Bolsonaro was entering a new and unpredictable phase with the potential to end his presidency .
He said: “These protests show our politicians that Brazilian society has reached such a level of anger and boredom with the state of affairs caused by the absolute ineptitude of Bolsonarism, which it is willing to protest even in the midst of a pandemic. This hadn’t happened before.
“Okay, they were driven, with protesters in cars. But it shows that society is about to explode ”.
Supporters of Bolsonaro, who say their opposition to coronavirus containment measures is designed to protect Brazil’s economy, downplayed the protests. President Eduardo Bolsonaro’s son, a politician, attacked what he called “villainous media” for exaggerating what he described as embarrassingly small demonstrations.
Villaverde, who studied Brazil’s history of impeachment, said he believed that two years after his four-year term, Bolsonaro was on the ropes.
“We are now very, very close to the moment when all the conditions exist for an impeachment process to occur,” said Villaverde, pointing to the economy shaken by Covid do Brasil, the existence of several impeachment crimes linked to the pandemic and precarious support in the congress.
Still lacking sustained street protests and a further collapse in public support that would convince members of Congress to abandon Bolsonaro. On Friday, one of Brazil’s top polls, Datafolha, said Bolsonaro’s rejection jumped 8%, while support dropped from 37% to 31%. An impeachment process would become more likely if that number dropped to about 20%, said Villaverde.
The next few weeks could be significant for Bolsonaro’s political survival, with the government’s emergency coronavirus benefit payments scheduled to end on Wednesday.
“We are on the verge of a very, very serious social problem,” said Villaverde. “Millions and millions of Brazilians and Brazilians will be endless in the middle of a second wave, when we already have 15 million unemployed.”