South American Politics thread - Page 61

On October 31 2022 16:47 Mikau313 wrote:
Smart to pre-empt the inevitable round of Bolsonaro questioning the results. Having the president of the US congratulate Lula so publically makes it a lot harder to sell the "election was stolen" claims that are inevitably going to happen.

A day after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been elected Brazil's new president, sectors of the transport and truckers' union most sympathetic to Jair Bolsonaro have blocked several highways and other access roads to major arteries around the country, in protest of the results.

More than 60 blockades and protests have been confirmed in at least twelve states, according to the organizers themselves. In Rio de Janeiro, the main road connecting with Sao Paulo, the Dutra highway, has been interrupted for a few hours, as well as in other places in Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, Rondônia, Santa Catarina, or Rio Grande do Sul and Paraná, among others.

Leaders of the 2018 mobilizations and other entities of transporters have condemned Monday's stoppages and have been quick to recognize the result of the presidential elections with which Lula da Silva will return to the Planalto Palace more than twelve years later.

The Brazilian Police reported that approximately one hundred people mobilized in Rio de Janeiro to show their "dissatisfaction" with the results of the presidential elections due to an alleged "fraud".

The authorities have confirmed the burning of tires and even of some vehicles to impede free circulation, which in places such as Mato Grosso has also affected the transit of ambulances and trucks with live animals, reports the newspaper 'O Globo'.

This Sunday Lula da Silva has been elected new president of Brazil after winning over Jair Bolsonaro in one of the last closest elections in recent memory in the South American giant. The leader of the Workers' Party (PT) obtained two million more votes, 50.9 percent of them, than his rival, who more than half a day later has still not acknowledged his defeat.

On November 02 2022 07:33 JimmiC wrote:
That is great news, I thought it was going to be a shit show for a while. So strange that now we have to worry not only about who wins, but whether or not the loser will accept the results or incite the people.

On November 02 2022 04:49 Sbrubbles wrote:
Bolsonaro (finally) goes public accepting the election results. I'm breathing a sigh of relief to be honest.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández was convicted and sentenced Tuesday to six years in prison and a lifetime ban from holding public office for a fraud scheme that embezzled $1 billion through public works projects during her presidency.

A three-judge panel found the Peronist leader guilty of fraud, but rejected a charge of running a criminal organization, for which the sentence could have been 12 years in prison. It’s the first time an Argentine vice president has been convicted of a crime while in office.

The sentence isn’t firm until appeals are decided, a process that could take years. She remains immune from arrest meanwhile, as long as she can keep getting elected.

Speaking after the verdict, she described herself as the victim of a “judicial mafia.”

Her supporters vowed to paralyze the country with a nationwide strike. They clogged downtown Buenos Aires and marched on the federal court building, beating drums and shouting as they pressed against police barriers.

Fernández roundly denied all the accusations. Argentina’s dominant leader this century, she was accused of improperly granting public works contracts to a construction magnate closely tied to her family.

The verdict is certain to deepen fissures in the South American nation, where politics can be a blood sport and the 69-year-old populist leader is either loved or hated.

Prosecutors said Fernández fraudulently directed 51 public works projects to Lázaro Báez, a construction magnate and early ally of her and her husband Nestor Kirchner, who served as president from 2003-2007 and died suddenly in 2010.

Báez and members of her 2007-2015 presidential administration were among a dozen others accused in the conspiracy. The panel sentenced Báez and her public works secretary, José López, to six years. Most of the others got lesser sentences.

Prosecutors Diego Luciani and Sergio Mola said the Báez company was created to embezzle revenues through improperly bid projects that suffered from cost overruns and in many cases were never completed. The company disappeared after the Kirchners’ 12 years in power, they said.

In Argentina, judges in such cases customarily pronounce verdicts and sentences first and explain how they reached their decision later. The panel’s full decision is expected in February. After that, the verdict can be appealed up to the Supreme Court, a process that could take years.

Pollster Roberto Bacman, who directs Argentina’s Center for Public Opinion Studies and supported the campaign of current President Alberto Fernández, said the opposition parties have been hoping to campaign calling her a convict, as well as a thief and a whore.

And Cristina Fernández, who last month compared her judges to a “firing squad,” is ready to play the victim, characterizing the judiciary as a pawn of right-wing forces including opposition media and Mauricio Macri, who succeeded her as president, Bacman said.

“So we already know how she’ll be attacked and also how Kirchnerism will defend her, which is to consider her a victim of “lawfare,” just like Lula (President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) faced in Brazil or what the former president of Ecuador (Rafael Correa) currently faces,” Bacman said.

Either way, she remains the singular leader of the leftist faction of the Peronist movement. Bacman said his surveys show 62% want her removed and 38% support her, no matter what.

Meanwhile, other cases remain pending against her, including a charge of money-laundering that also involves her son and daughter.

On December 07 2022 15:17 RvB wrote:
Did you read the article you posted? It says she can appeal up to the Supreme court.

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Peru’s new government imposed a police state Wednesday in response to violent protests following the ouster of President Pedro Castillo. The 30-day national emergency declaration suspends the rights of “personal security and freedom” across the Andean nation.

Acts of vandalism, violence and highway blockades “require a forceful and authoritative response from the government,” Defense Minister Luis Otarola Peñaranda announced.

The declaration suspends the rights of assembly and freedom of movement and empowers the police, supported by Peru’s military, to search people’s homes without permission or judicial order. Otarola said it has not determined whether a curfew will be imposed. He estimated the total number of people “causing this disturbance” at no more than 8,000 nationwide.

The defense minister said the declaration was agreed to by the council of ministers. It didn’t mention Peru’s new president, Dina Boluarte, who was sworn in by Congress hours after lawmakers ousted Castillo.

Boluarte pleaded for calm as demonstrations continue against her and the Congress that ousted her predecessor.

“Peru cannot overflow with blood,” she said earlier Wednesday. Answering demands for immediate elections, she suggested they could be held a year from now, four months before her earlier proposal, which placated no one.

Boluarte floated the possibility of sheduling general elections for December 2023 to reporters, just before a hearing to determine whether Castillo will remain jailed for 18 months while authorities build a rebellion case against him. The judge then postponed the hearing after Castillo refused to participate.

“The only thing I can tell you sisters and brothers (is) to keep calm,” Boluarte said. “We have already lived through this experience in the 80s and 90s, and I believe that we do not want to return to that painful history.”

The remarks of Castillo’s running mate, installed by Congress just a week ago to replace him, recalled the ruinous years when the Shining Path insurgency presided over numerous car bombings and assassinations. The group was blamed for more than half of the nearly 70,000 estimated deaths and disappearances, caused by various rebel groups and a brutal government counterinsurgency response.

Protesters have blocked streets in Peru’s capital and many rural communities, demanding Castillo’s freedom, Boluarte’s resignation and the immediate scheduling of general elections to pick a new president and replace all members of Congress. At least seven people have been killed, including a teenager who died Wednesday after being injured during protests in Andahuaylas, a hospital director said.

All perished in the same kinds of impoverished communities whose voters propelled the rural teachers union leader to victory last year after he promised a populist approach to governing.

Castillo was ousted by lawmakers on Dec. 7 when he sought to dissolve Congress ahead of their third attempt to impeach him. His vehicle was intercepted as he traveled through Lima’s streets with his security detail. Prosecutors accused him of trying to seek political asylum at Mexico’s embassy.

In a handwritten letter shared Wednesday with The Associated Press by his associate Mauro Gonzales, Castillo asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to intercede for his “rights and the rights of my Peruvian brothers who cry out for justice.” The commission investigates allegations of human rights violations and litigates them in some cases.

In the last week, protesters have burned police stations, taken over an airstrip used by the armed forces and invaded the runway of the international airport in Arequipa, a gateway to some of Peru’s tourist attractions. The passenger train that carries visitors to Machu Picchu suspended service, and roadblocks on the Pan-American Highway have stranded trailer trucks for days, spoiling food bound for the capital.

By Wednesday, members of the armed forces had already been deployed to Arequipa and other areas outside Lima. Securing rural areas far from the capital could take longer.

Five of the deaths have been in Andahuaylas, an Andean community whose impoverished residents have long felt abandoned by the government and occasionally rebelled against it. College student Luis Torres joined a protest of about 2,000 people there Wednesday as a few white vans carrying soldiers moved through the streets.

“This measure is disproportionate. It shows the political precariousness of the government that Mrs. Dina Boluarte is having now,” Torres said. “We are all marching peacefully, for something fair that we are demanding. At least Andahuaylas will continue to fight.”

BRASÍLIA — President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is expected to take the reins of the Brazilian government on Sunday in an elaborate inauguration, complete with a motorcade, music festival and hundreds of thousands of supporters filling the central esplanade of Brasília, the nation’s capital.

But one key person will be missing: the departing far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Without him, there will be no ceremonial passing of the presidential sash on Sunday, an important symbol of the peaceful transition of power in a nation where many people still recall the 21-year military dictatorship that ended in 1985.

Instead, Mr. Bolsonaro woke up Sunday 6,000 miles away, in a rented house owned by a professional mixed-martial-arts fighter a few miles from Disney World. Facing various investigations from his time in his office, Mr. Bolsonaro flew to Orlando on Friday night and plans to stay in Florida for at least a month.

Mr. Bolsonaro had questioned the reliability of Brazil’s election systems for months, without evidence, and when he lost in October, he refused to concede unequivocally. In a sort of farewell address on Friday, breaking weeks of near silence, he said that he tried to block Mr. Lula from taking office but failed.

“Within the laws, respecting the Constitution, I searched for a way out of this,” he said. He then appeared to encourage his supporters to move on. “We live in a democracy or we don’t,” he said. “No one wants an adventure.”

That message did not appear to resonate with many supporters. Thousands remained camped outside the army headquarters in Brasília, as they have been since the election, many saying they were convinced that at the final moment on Sunday, the military would prevent Mr. Lula from taking office.

“The army will step in,” said Magno Rodrigues, 60, a former mechanic and janitor who gives daily speeches at the protests. “The army has patriotism and love for the country, and in the past, the army did the same thing.” He was referencing the 1964 military coup that ushered in the dictatorship.

Mr. Rodrigues has spent the past nine weeks camped outside the army headquarters, sleeping in a tent on a narrow pad with his wife. He provided a tour of the encampment, which had become a small village since Mr. Bolsonaro lost the election. It has showers, a laundry service, cellphone-charging stations, a hospital, 28 food stalls and even a system for relieving himself inside the tent.

The Brazilian Army has allowed the protesters to remain but has shown no signs of intervening in the government handover. The protests have been overwhelmingly nonviolent — with more praying than rioting — but a small group of people have set fire to vehicles. Mr. Lula’s transitional government has suggested that the encampments will not be tolerated for much longer.

How long was Mr. Rodrigues prepared to stay? “As long as it takes to liberate my country,” he said, dressed in a leather jacket and leaning on a cane outside the portable toilets. “For the rest of my life if I have to.”

Elsewhere in Brasília, it was a party. Hundreds of thousands of people streamed into the sprawling, planned capital, founded in 1960 to house the Brazilian government, with many dressed in the bright red of Mr. Lula’s leftist Workers’ Party.

Passengers on arriving planes broke into rally songs about Mr. Lula, revelers danced to samba at New Year’s Eve parties and, across the city, spontaneous cries rang out from balconies and street corners, heralding Mr. Lula’s arrival and Mr. Bolsonaro’s exit.

“Lula’s inauguration is mainly about hope,” said Isabela Nascimento, 30, a software developer walking to the festivities on Sunday. “I hope to see him representing not only a political party, but an entire population — a whole group of people who just want to be happier.”

Mr. Lula, 77, completes a stunning political comeback on Sunday. He was once Brazil’s most popular president, leaving office with an approval rating above 80 percent. He then served 580 days in prison, from 2018 to 2019, on corruption charges that he accepted a condo and renovations from construction companies bidding on government contracts.

After those convictions were thrown out because the Supreme Court ruled that the judge in Mr. Lula’s case was biased, he ran for the presidency again — and won.

Mr. Lula and his supporters maintain that he was the victim of political persecution. Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters say that Brazil now has a criminal as president.

The absence of Mr. Bolsonaro and the presence of thousands of protesters who believe the election was stolen illustrate the deep divide and tall challenges that Mr. Lula will now face in his third term as president of Latin America’s biggest country and one of the world’s largest democracies.

He oversaw a boom in Brazil from 2003 to 2011, but the country was not nearly as polarized then, and the economic tailwinds were far stronger. Mr. Lula’s election caps a leftist wave in Latin America, with six of the region’s seven largest countries electing leftist leaders since 2018, fueled by an anti-incumbent backlash.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s decision to spend at least the first weeks of Mr. Lula’s presidency in Florida also shows his unease about his future in Brazil. Mr. Bolsonaro, 67, is linked to five separate inquiries, including one into his release of documents related to a classified investigation, another on his attacks on Brazil’s voting machines and another into his potential connections to “digital militias” that spread misinformation on his behalf.

As a regular citizen, Mr. Bolsonaro will now lose the prosecutorial immunity he had as president. Some cases against him will probably be moved to local courts from the Supreme Court.

Some top federal prosecutors who have worked on the cases believe there is enough evidence to convict Mr. Bolsonaro, particularly in the case related to the release of classified material, according to a top federal prosecutor who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential investigations.

It is unlikely that Mr. Bolsonaro’s presence in the United States could protect him from prosecution in Brazil. Still, Florida has become a sort of refuge for conservative Brazilians in recent years.

Prominent pundits on some of Brazil’s most popular talk shows are based in Florida. A far-right provocateur who faces arrest in Brazil for threatening judges has lived in Florida as he awaits a response to his political asylum request in the United States. And Carla Zambelli, one of Mr. Bolsonaro’s top allies in Brazil’s Congress, fled to Florida for nearly three weeks after she was filmed pursuing a man at gunpoint on the eve of the election.

“We have freedom here,” said Rodrigo Constantino, a prominent Brazilian right-wing commentator who lives near Miami.

Mr. Bolsonaro plans to stay in Florida for one to three months, giving him some distance to observe whether Mr. Lula’s administration will push any of the investigations against him, according to a close friend of the Bolsonaro family who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private plans.

“He will try to stay low for a while — to disappear,” Mr. Constantino said.

On Saturday, Mr. Bolsonaro greeted his new neighbors in the driveway of his rented Orlando house, many of them Brazilian immigrants who took selfies with the departing president. He then went to a KFC to eat.

It is not uncommon for former heads of state to live in the United States for posts in academia or similar ventures. But it is unusual for a head of state to seek safe haven in the United States from possible prosecution at home, particularly when the home country is a democratic U.S. ally.

Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies argue that he is a political target of Brazil’s left and particularly Brazil’s Supreme Court. They have largely dropped claims that the election was rigged because of voter fraud, but instead now claim that it was unfair because Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice who runs Brazil’s election agency, tipped the scales for Mr. Lula.

Mr. Moraes was an active player in the election, suspending the social-media accounts of many of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters and granting Mr. Lula more television time because of misleading statements in Mr. Bolsonaro’s political ads. Mr. Moraes has said he needed to act to counter the antidemocratic stances of Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters. Some legal experts worry that he has abused his power, often acting unilaterally in ways that go far beyond that of a typical Supreme Court judge.

Still, Mr. Bolsonaro has faced widespread criticism, on both the right and the left, for his response to his election loss. After suggesting for months he would dispute any loss — firing up his supporters and worrying his critics — he instead went silent, refusing to acknowledge Mr. Lula’s victory publicly. His administration carried out the transition as he receded from the spotlight and many of his official duties.

On Saturday night, in his departing speech to the nation, even his vice president, Hamilton Mourão, a former general, made clear his views on Mr. Bolsonaro’s final moments as president.

“Leaders that should reassure and unite the nation around a project for the country have let their silence or inopportune and harmful protagonism create a climate of chaos and social disintegration,” Mr. Mourão said.