While the Australian Prime Minister appears to take some pleasure in exercising his newly-acquired dictatorial powers, the President of Brazil is presently engaged in a bold and courageous fight for democracy and the fundamental rights of his people.
In a nationally televised broadcast, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro accused the country’s anti-democratic elites of unleashing a vicious attack on the Brazilian people. He stated that Brazil’s democracy is at a serious risk by draconian measures engendered by some governors and mayors in an attempt to destabilise his government but that eventually leads to the breakdown of law and order, and eventual collapse of the entire Brazilian economy.
The President’s pronouncement was especially harsh against the notoriously biased Brazilian media, where he correctly accuses of spreading misinformation and irrational fear to the entire population. He was also extremely critical of the local authorities (mayors and governors) who are taking draconian measures against their own people, such as closing trade, suspending public transport and compulsorily isolating the entire community.
The implementation of such appalling measures may well come at the cost of 40 million people losing their jobs. Many Brazilians now are threatened with having nothing to eat, starving to death in the confinement of their homes. One recent report has found that 10 million people in the country’s shantytowns have no savings whatsoever. They will lack money for food after another week of lockdown by these unpopular local authorities opposing the federal administration.
The Brazilian ruling elites are effectively using the so called “pandemic” in order to increase the power of the state and to amass huge power and control over the ordinary people. The coronavirus “pandemic” started this year and it has allegedly resulted in only 159 deaths in Brazil – a country of more than 200 million people and where more than 1,080 have died of tuberculosis over the last three months alone.
What is more, the number of deaths for coronavirus have been dramatically inflated, since there have been numerous reports of medical doctors being forced by the local authorities to falsely attribute the cause of death to the coronavirus.
There are at least three formal requests at the moment for the impeachment of President Bolsonaro. One of them comes from an obscure federal congressman from the leftist Workers’ Party. He demands the President’s removal on the grounds that he appears to prioritise jobs and the economy over “health care”. He directly refers to a video released by the federal government where Brazilian workers from different economic sectors of society correctly remind the Brazilian people that it is absolutely essential that the economy continues to move and, therefore, that the nation returns to normality.
The attempt to impeach an elected president amounts to a desperate effort of the ruling elites to remove an “outsider”. Bolsonaro is people’s man who loves his country and cares about the people. He knows that as a result of draconian measures adopted against his will countless jobs will be destroyed, and that as a result it is the poor and the more disadvantaged who will be suffering unjustly and disproportionally.
Of course, he is absolutely right. This is why we need to support this brave politician and his people in their ongoing struggle against the ruling political elites in Brazil.
Dr Augusto Zimmermann PhD (Mon.), LLM cum laude (PUC-Rio), LLB (PUC-Rio), DipEd, CertIntArb is Head and Professor of Law at Sheridan College in Perth, Western Australia, and Professor of Law (Adjunct) at the University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney campus. He is also President of the Western Australian Legal Theory Association (WALTA), Editor-in-Chief of the Western Australian Jurist law journal, and a former Commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia (2012-2017). Dr Zimmermann is also the recipient of the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research, Murdoch University (2012). He is the author of numerous Brazilian law books and articles, including ‘Direito Constitucional Brasileiro’ (Lumen Juris, 2014) a 1,000 page, two-volume book on Brazilian constitutional law co-authored by Fabio Condeixa.