After last year’s riots, Latin America’s most populous democracy tries to piece itself together
https://apnews.com/article/brazil-bolso ... 6b719c51b1
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s Congress has everything ready to open an exhibit Monday featuring pieces including a tapestry crafted by renowned artist Burle Marx and a replica of the country’s constitution dated 1988.
The display is notable not because of the rarity of the objects, but because they are the living memory of one of the grimmest episodes in Brazil’s recent history: As unprecedented riots in support of former President Jair Bolsonaro took place on Jan. 8, 2023, in government buildings in the capital Brasilia, the tapestry was damaged and the replica constitution was taken.
Many saw the rioting as part of a failed attempt by Bolsonaro to remain in power following his election loss. A year and hundreds of arrests later, Brazil is still recovering.
“Brazil’s society still doesn’t know how to handle what happened, there’s no consensus,” said Creomar de Souza, founder of political risk consultancy Dharma Politics. “Brazil’s society is now in extreme opposites. And parts of those opposites are in a place that they cannot reconcile with the other.”
Mimicking the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection by defenders of outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump at the Capitol in Washington, thousands of Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed the presidential palace, Congress and the Supreme Court buildings, in one of the biggest challenges to Latin America’s most populous democracy.
Members of the three branches of power in Brazil say democracy and its guardrails have been restored after the trashing of the government buildings. But arrests have led supporters of the former president to say their freedom of speech is being violated and claim they are politically persecuted.
Pollster Quaest said 89% of Brazilians see the events of Jan. 8 negatively. Some 47% believe Bolsonaro was somehow involved in the riots.
Brazilian democracy in the aftermath
of 8 January
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/ ... 354_EN.pdf
SUMMARY
On 8 January 2023, far-right supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the presidential
palace, the Supreme Court and the Congress in Brasilia. The events, widely acknowledged as
echoing the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, took place only a week after the
inauguration of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as President of Brazil for the third time; Bolsonaro, who did
not concede defeat in the October 2022 election, was notably absent from the inauguration.
The European Union has condemned the anti-democratic acts of violence, reiterated its full support
for President Lula Da Silva, and for the Brazilian democratic system, and expressed solidarity with
the democratic institutions targeted by this attack. On 19 January 2023, the European Parliament
adopted a resolution also expressing solidarity with the Lula government and Brazilian institutions
and urging supporters of ex-President Bolsonaro to accept the democratic outcome of the elections.
Parliament also welcomed the investigation to identify and prosecute those involved and
highlighted a recent decision taken by the Brazilian Supreme Court to approve the federal
prosecutors' request to investigate Bolsonaro.
CASE STUDY: BRAZIL
Global State of Democracy 2023 Report
https://www.idea.int/sites/default/file ... report.pdf
On 8 January 2023, Brazil experienced ‘the most serious attack on state institutions since its return to democracy in 1985’ (Souto 2023). In an
assault with alarming parallels to the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol
in the United States, supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed government buildings (Sullivan and Glen 2023), claiming the election had been fraudulent. This assault, which came months after Bolsonaro lost the election to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has been attributed to Bolsonaro’s spread of election misinformation, toxic polarization and rising extremism (Salomón 2022). Like former US President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro frequently cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Brazilian electoral system, claiming without evidence that it was prone to fraud, especially regarding the electronic voting system (Al Jazeera 2022b; Santos 2022; Nicas, Milhorance and Ionova 2022). Bolsonaro issued a statement on social media condemning the riots and rejecting allegations of his involvement (Bolsonaro 2023; Millard 2023).
The 8 January attacks were the culmination of Bolsonaro’s efforts to destabilize democracy during his presidency (2019–2022), which was characterized by attempts to weaken core institutions, including electoral bodies, civil society, the media, and law enforcement agencies.