SÃO PAULO, Brazil – “I’ll let the villains know,” President Jair Bolsonaro told supporters last year: “I will never be jailed!”
He was screaming. But then Mr. Bolsonaro tends to get animated when he talks about the prospect of a prison. “By God above,” he declared to an audience of businessmen in May, “I will never be arrested.” Since he spends “more than half” of his time handling lawsuits, he certainly feels well-armed against arrest. But there is despair in his resistance. The fate of former Bolivian President Jeanine Áñez, who was recently sentenced to prison for allegedly orchestrating a coup, hangs heavily in the air.
For Mr. Bolsonaro, it is a cautionary tale. In the run-up to the October presidential election, which he is on track to lose, Mr Bolsonaro is clearly concerned that he too will be arrested for, as he put it with an unusual understatement, “anti-democratic actions.” That fear explains his energetic efforts to discredit the elections before they happen — such as, for example, rallying dozens of foreign diplomats to rant against the country’s electronic voting system.
But as absurd as the behavior is – and forcing ambassadors to sit through a 47-minute insane diatribe is certainly on the wacky end of the spectrum – the underlying motive makes perfect sense. Because the truth is, Mr. Bolsonaro has plenty of reasons to fear prison. In fact, it becomes difficult to keep track of all the charges against the president and his administration.
For starters, there’s the small matter of a Supreme Court investigation into Bolsonaro’s allies for joining a sort of “digital militia” that floods social media with disinformation and coordinates smear campaigns against political opponents. In a related investigation, Mr. Bolsonaro himself is being investigated for, in the words of a federal police report, his “direct and relevant role” in promoting disinformation.
Yet Mr Bolsonaro’s misconduct is hardly confined to the digital world. Corruption scandals have defined his tenure, and the rot is starting at home. Two of his sons, who also hold public office, have been accused by prosecutors of systematically stealing public money by putting some of the salaries of close associates and ghost employees on their payrolls. Similar allegations, regarding his stint as a legislator, have been directed at the president himself. In March, he was charged with administrative incompetence for keeping a ghost employee as his congressional officer for 15 years. (The supposed assistant was actually an açaí seller.)
High-ranking members of the government are also accused of corruption. In June, Brazil’s former education minister, Milton Ribeiro, was arrested on charges of influence. Mr Bolsonaro, mentioned by name by Mr Ribeiro in compromising audio clips, was steadfast in his defense of the minister. “I would put my face in the fire for Milton,” the president said before the arrest, later explaining that he would only put his hand in the fire. He claims, against all available evidence, there is no “endemic corruption” in his government.
Then there’s the scathing Senate special committee report on Brazil’s response to Covid-19, which details how the president has actively contributed to the spread of the coronavirus and can be blamed for many of Brazil’s 679,000 deaths. It recommends that Mr. Bolsonaro be charged with nine crimes, including misuse of public resources, violation of social rights and crimes against humanity.
How is the president responding to this swirling indictment? With secrecy orders. Covering a century of evidence, these injunctions have been applied to all sorts of “sensitive” information: the detailed charges of Mr. Bolsonaro’s business credit card; the military disciplinary process that acquitted a general and former health minister of participating in a pro-Bolsonaro demonstration; and fiscal reports of the corruption investigation targeting his eldest son. This is a far cry from the man who boasted early in his tenure about bringing “transparency above all else!”
When secrecy doesn’t work, there’s obstruction. Mr. Bolsonaro has often been accused of trying to obtain privileged information from investigations, or of thwarting it altogether. In the most infamous case, the president was accused by his own former justice minister of interfering with the independence of the federal police. It’s a credible charge. After all, in a leaked recording of a ministerial meeting two years ago, Bolsonaro was caught saying he wouldn’t wait “for my family or my friends to get screwed” when he might as well replace law enforcement officers.
In order to exercise that power, however, he must keep his job. With that in mind, Bolsonaro has handed out top government jobs and used a pot of funds, dubbed a “secret budget” for its lack of transparency, to ensure the support of centrist lawmakers. Given the strength of the calls for impeachment – more than 130 petitions had been filed against him by December 2021 – a support bank is crucial. The strategy is no secret: Bolsonaro confessed that he had done both to “appease Congress.” He denies that the budget is secret, despite the fact that those requesting money from it remain anonymous.
But the bigger challenge is winning the electorate. There, Mr. Bolsonaro again resorts to tricks and solutions. In July, Congress passed a constitutional amendment — dubbed the “kamikaze law” by the Secretary of the Economy — that would give the government the right to spend an additional $7.6 billion on Social Security and other benefits until December 31. . shameless attempt to build support across the country, that’s because it is.
Whether it will help the president’s cause, who knows. But the signal it sends is unmistakable: Bolsonaro is desperate to avoid defeat. And he has every reason for that.