Prominent figures from across Brazil’s political spectrum have a published a high-profile manifesto calling for a united front to protect Brazilian democracy and lives amid growing alarm over President Jair Bolsonaro’s authoritarian outbursts and shambolic response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Movimento Estamos Juntos (We’re In This Together Movement) was launched on Saturday as Brazil overtook France to become the nation with the fourth-highest official death toll.
About 1,000 novel coronavirus deaths are being confirmed each day as Latin America’s biggest economy cements itself as a major focus of the pandemic.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“The choice is between democracy and barbarity... It is our country’s future that’s at stake,” tweeted Marcelo Freixo, a left-wing congressman, as he endorsed the movement’s creation alongside leading lights of Brazilian academia, culture and politics.
Maranhao Governor Flavio Dino, another prominent leftist who has also joined, said Brazil’s very democracy was at risk if Bolsonaro’s tens of millions of opponents were unable to unite.
“Bolsonaro sometimes comes across as a caricature, something comical. But he’s dangerous — he and the followers of this fanatical far-right sect are dangerous,” Dino said.
Dino said the new movement was inspired by Diretas Ja — a historic pro-democracy campaign that helped end two decades of military rule in the 1980s.
“Just as there was this broad coalition to defeat the dictatorship we believe we must now build a broad coalition to avoid a new dictatorship,” Dino said.
Lobao, a right-wing rockstar, said he had signed up out of disgust at the “genocidal fiasco” caused by Bolsonaro’s response to the pandemic.
“We cannot allow this mockery and this utter negligence towards public health to continue,” said the musician, who voted for Bolsonaro in 2018 before regretting his choice.
The movement’s foundation came as a record 33,274 new coronavirus cases on Saturday pushed Brazil’s total to nearly 500,000. It had more than 515,000 confirmed cases as of yesterday.
More than 29,000 Brazilians have died since the first death was confirmed in the middle of March, meaning only the US, the UK and Italy have lost more lives.
Despite this, Bolsonaro continues to flout social distancing and has failed to appoint a permanent health minister after two were forced out in under a month.
On Sunday, he paraded through the capital, Brasilia, on horseback, and without a mask during an anti-democracy protest by his devotees.
The right-wing populist has further stoked tensions by attending a succession of anti-democratic protests where demonstrators have called for Congress and the Supreme Court to be closed or even torched.
Last week, after police raided the homes and offices of several key Bolsonaro supporters, the president appeared outside his residence in a tie adorned with images of assault rifles.
“This is fucking over,” Bolsonaro bellowed.
His politician son, Eduardo, warned Brazil was approaching “a moment of rupture.”
The manifesto — which urges Brazilians to mobilize in defense of “life, freedom and democracy” — received support from an unusually broad church, reflecting the growing anti-Bolsonaro revolt.
Its more than 100,000 signatories include former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardosop; Felipe Neto, a YouTube celebrity with 38 million followers; and some of Brazil’s top actors, including Fernanda Montenegro, Tais Araujo and Lazaro Ramos.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day. The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets. The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants. However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they
RSS