The first thirty days in office have made evident Bolsonaro and his cronies’ inconsistency, demonstrating his government as a constitutional screen where the preventive counter-revolutionary military coup is hidden, unfastened by the High Command of the reactionary Army Forces. The next months will make clear that Bolsonaro can only play the role of a farce figure and, even though, insofar as and while still be useful.
This starts by the basic question so emphasised by his campaign promises about changing “everything that has been around”. Verification of irregularities with the public money involving his son, senator Flávio Bolsonaro, and his relationship with the militias’ bosses in Rio de Janeiro, have already divided the bolsonarist nucleus. The nonsense shown by his collaborators like Damares Alves and Ernesto Araújo – the Foreign Affairs Minister – who insisted in giving priorities to ideological questions of their so-called “gender ”, “politically correct” , “cultural Marxism” and “school without a party” matters have only suited as a smoke screen to conceal the negotiations on the “Social Welfare Reform”, besides running into Paulo Guedes’ agenda. Bolsonaro’s open defence on shifting the Brazilian Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the setting up of a US military base in Brasil have cost him contestation and contradicted statements by subordinates and commanders. The Embassy shifting was made meaningless by General Mourão while welcoming representatives from the Arabic countries. The US base has resulted in irritation on the point of creating a real public reprimand to the President for laying cards on the table about the High Military Command secret affair.
Another aspect is the media estrangement created by the persistence to communicate with his audience via Internet by Bolsonaro’s ‘kids’, Olavo de Carvalho’s hideous offspring. Things like those deviate the attention of the public opinion, commentators and analysts on the political life, while the government, behind the scenes and effectively, imposes itself.
Extravagant situation that has been grasped by general Mourão to enlarge his presence in the government, paying attention to newspaper people, including correcting Bolsonaro’s statements and his clique’s, in secret conversation with foreign correspondents. The General Mourão of the Masonry statements – in which he preached the military coup, defended a new Constitution drafted by notable persons and some other gems of the reactionarism, as for instance giving support to the military intervention im Venezuela – has suddenly made way to a moderate and cautious person. Such a change can only be conceived as a product of an important orientation, or better, an order. It is one more offensive step towards the usurpation of Bolsonaro’s government by the High Military Command to minimize the damages that could eventually wear out, earlier than one might think, the government that has just begun.
Between small clashes and collisions the distrust that the High Command of the reactionary Armed Forces has always nourished about the Captain – who retired more than three decades ago for disciplinary matters – are being confirmed. By the way, Bolsonaro, as a matter of fact, was moved away because of his link with extreme-right wing terrorist acts in retaliation to the so-called regime “opening”; acts that he tied to troops’ claims, trying to use military corporative discontent as protests against the end of the fascist regime started in 1964. It was a chicanery in the Supreme Military Court that made Bolsonaro free of a severe punishment, making possible his entrance in the electionist politics where his carreer of more than 30 years as a professional politician has been promoted. And being notably mediocre until then.
Seven of Bolsonaro’s ministers are militaries and when the minister is a civil person there is a military as his general secretary. The State strategic areas and specially key positions of the government operability are under de absolute control of the High Command of the Armed Forces. The preventive counter-revolutionary military coup was unleashed well in advance the electoral process, inserting itself in this government ( not its choice) as a circumstance product and taking temporarily the shape of a government favourished in the polls of the electoral farce. It is a condition put forth by the imperative need of the ruling classes and the imperialism for saving the secular existing oppression and exploitation system of the people and national subjugation, threatened by the serious economic, political, moral and social crisis.
The conformation and functioning of the government, behind all that clucking on necessary and redeeming “reforms”, amidst the pastiche and scandals exposures that have involved Bolsonaro clan and his cronies, shelter an internal struggle on the regime to be established. The fascist and messianic approach of the elected president exhibits itself much foolhardy to the High Military Commands since it shows crudely and blatantly the pro-Yankee game. The military secret government in its mission, operated by the High Command, has been handling so that the counter-revolutionary coup can have the most coverage and legal appearance in order not to precipitate the expansion of the resistance field to it.
In contrast to misleading what they try to portray, the serious crisis in which the country has been dragging on for more than five years has not finished with the elections but it has only changed its quality. It has deepened, bringing to to centre the Armed Forces through the High Command coup plan that has taken the government. The fights between the local ruling classes fractions, as a part of the formidable general crisis, cannot be solved via elections. Consequently the military coup has been unleashed trying to conceal itself in the form of a constitutional government.
Within the general crisis that involves the imperialism and the country, the Yankee imperialism increases its militarisation in the continent and imposes to such a wretched government to carry out three reactionary, urgent and compelling tasks: 1) To get the country out of the crisis and propel its obsolete bureaucratic capitalism. 2) To restructure the old State conforming the regime of a maximum centralization of power in the Executive ( absolute presidential system). 3) To conjure the danger of revolution and , in case it eclodes, defeat it immediately with blood and fire.
The compradora fraction of the great Brazilian bourgeoisie predominates in the government with Paulo Guedes; however it faces the resistance of the bureaucratic fraction and the purpose of the super-minister to reform the notarial tradition State, privatise State banks and enterprises of the electric power sector as well as with the determination of the military leadership to keep the Social Welfare privileges of he High Command of the Forces, highly onerous to the public treasury. The other super-minister and Americophiliac, Moro, has produced his package hardenning the Criminal Code so that the penalties can go up, increased the imprisonment of the contingent still bigger of the impoverished population and the siege to the corrupt pratices relative to the system which the electoral scoundrels do not abandon. Very soon he will call terrorists the political organizations and the revolutionary people’s movement.
These and some other internal contradictions of the government that certainly mirror themselves in the Parliament will provoke, in the next months, with the debates of the “Social Welfare Reform”, serious headaches to those who, in fact, rule the country. The application of more anti-worker and motherland traitor measures, as well as the repression to the people’s struggle, will worsen the political crisis.
At the side of the people, including the minority who has elected Bolsonaro, the disappointment increases everytime the bolsonarism announces measures of an administration aiming at the interests of the wealthy people, the international financial system and the military expansion of the Yankee imperialism, displaying the same old policy. The workers are becoming aware of such a reality, trying to find new protest forms and preparing for large combats, starting with the proposition of a general strike as a resistance to the assault of their rights.