Jair Bolsonaro takes power. With a vengeance.
His presidency is off to a shaky start in Brazil.
No sooner was Jair Bolsonaro sworn in as president of Brazil on New Year’s Day than he let loose a fountain of far-right decrees, undermining protections for the environment, indigenous land rights and the LGBT community, putting nongovernmental organizations under government monitoring and purging government contractors who do not share his ideology. This thrilled Donald Trump, who tweeted enthusiastically, “Congratulations to President @JairBolsonaro who just made a great inauguration speech — the USA is with you!”
Mr. Bolsonaro returned the love, tweeting back, “Together, under God’s protection, we shall bring prosperity and progress to our people!”
His actions were a sad but not unexpected performance by Brazil’s new leader, a onetime military officer whose 27 years in the Brazilian Congress were notable only for crude insults to women, sexual minorities and blacks. “A good criminal is a dead criminal,” he declared; he promised to send “red outlaws” to prison or exile; he dedicated his vote to impeach former president Dilma Rousseff to the military officer responsible for her torture under the former military dictatorship. None of that seemed to matter to voters laboring under an economic collapse, a crime wave and a corruption scandal that undermined any faith in the political establishment. Mr. Bolsonaro’s promise of change, any change, was enough to sweep him into office with 55 percent of the vote in October. The language of his inaugural address — “I come before the nation today, a day in which the people have rid themselves of socialism, the inversion of values, statism and political correctness” — was music to the ears of his reactionary base, investors and Mr. Trump, who shares his values and his bluster. The stock market soared to record highs and the Brazilian real strengthened against the dollar.
Mobilizing anger, hatred and fear has become the familiar strategy of would-be authoritarians, and Mr. Bolsonaro has drawn liberally on the playbook of the likes of Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Viktor Orban of Hungary and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. He has also been dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics” for his outrageous remarks and political base of evangelical Christians, moneyed elites, craven politicians and military hawks. Turn to page 12
But bashing minorities and making grandiose promises go only so far to compensate for the lack of governing competence or a coherent program. Within the first week of Mr. Bolsonaro’s presidency, the same investors and military officers who celebrated a reactionary president were also given reasons for pause. While his economy minister, Paulo Guedes, a University of Chicago-educated neoliberal economist who taught economics in Chile during the Pinochet era, promised to reform Brazil’s unwieldy pension system, Mr. Bolsonaro made unscripted comments suggesting a minimum retirement age well below what his economic team was mulling.
He also alarmed various constituencies when, contrary to campaign pledges, he spoke of increasing taxes and when he questioned a proposed partnership between the Brazilian airplane manufacturer Embraer and Boeing, and when he suggested he would allow an American military base on Brazilian soil. His chief of staff said the president was “wrong” on the tax increase, Embraer stock tumbled and generals were report- edly unhappy.
Mr. Bolsonaro has only just begun. As he gathers momentum, with the memory of military dictatorship still strong, much will depend on the ability of Brazilian institutions to withstand his autocratic assault. Much will also depend on Mr. Bolsonaro’s ability to deliver on sorely needed economic reforms. That test begins in February, when the new Congress convenes — the president commands only an unstable coalition of several parties, and he is bound to encounter strong opposition to his reforms. A fateful year has begun for Brazil.