South American Politics thread - Page 21

On May 02 2019 05:26 JimmiC wrote:
I have not read much on it so I'm not going to claim to be an expert on anything but what I have read is that it was more a populism thing like Trump, so super popular with his base and super unpopular with his opposition but the base is big enough to carry him to victory.

The various reports that I read on democracy have them as a flawed democracy even above countries like Mexico. The good news is that Bolsonaro won 55% of the vote in a second-roundrun-off, his right-wing Partido Social Liberal won just 10% of the seats in Brazil’s Congress, which will force it to seek support from other parties in Congress so he can't just do whatever he wants.


Would you be able to send the sources on the links to the assassinations I have not read about them.

I have read about Temer (right of center) and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (left) and Operation Car wash. I'm guessing you think this a US conspiracy based on your posts. Do you have any sources so I can catch up.

The president, a right-wing populist, was swept into office with an expansive mandate for change by voters fed up with political corruption, violence and the lingering effects of a deep recession.

But without a new strategy in place, Mr. Bolsonaro has struggled to keep even the 58 lawmakers of his own party in line, calling into question his ability to pass politically unpopular measures in Brazil’s unruly, multiparty legislature, which has 594 representatives.

Hearings on pension changes have devolved into shouting matches, frustrating proponents inside and outside the government, and leading even former allies to speak of Mr. Bolsonaro with open contempt.

All of this has left him with the lowest popularity rating of any first-term president at this point in a tenure since democracy was restored in the mid-1980s, according to a poll by Datafolha: Thirty percent of those surveyed called his presidency bad or terrible.

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Mr. Bolsonaro has also made it easier for civilians to acquire weapons

Bolsonaro has appointed several generals to various ministries, such as those of transportation and defense. He also appointed judge Sergio Moro as his minister of justice. Moro is the judge who was behind the imprisonment of Lula da Silva, who at the time was the frontrunner in this year’s presidential race.

Last weekend, a high ranking general of Brazil’s military, General Villas Boas, admitted in an interview to the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo that he threatened Brazil’s Supreme Court so that it would rule in favor of Lula’s imprisonment.

Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, is facing growing calls to explain his family’s alleged links to the heavily armed and notoriously violent paramilitary gangs that control large swaths of Rio de Janeiro.

Questions over possible connections between the Bolsonaros and Rio’s so-called “militias” were swirling even before the former army captain took office in January – so much so that revellers at this year’s carnival penned a song satirising the president’s supposed criminal ties.

But those concerns intensified this week when a photograph emerged in which a grinning Jair Bolsonaro appears with his arm around Élcio Queiroz, one of the two men arrested on Tuesday for the 2018 assassination of the Rio councillor Marielle Franco