From Brasília
Anointed by Christ. When there are 41 days left for the elections that will decide the fate of the faltering Brazilian democracy Michelle Bolsonarothe president’s wife Jair Bolsonarogained prominence on horseback religious speech to the extreme. Or to put it bluntly, incendiary. She is the “most important” person in the campaign, said her husband (somewhat exaggerated), who spent this weekend meeting with soldiers at the Agulhas Negras Academy, from which he graduated five decades ago, and proselytizing. on the Rio de Janeiro-Sao Paulo highway, where he greeted hundreds of motorists despite the prevailing cold.
Michelle and the president, who will seek re-election on October 2, were the only speakers at the launch of the campaign held at the Maracanazinho stadium, next to the Maracana stadium in Rio, under the gaze of the vice candidate, the rather unpopular general Walter Souza Braga Netto.
The first lady also spoke in Juiz de Fora, where then-candidate Bolsonaro was stabbed four years ago a month before the elections. She energetically proclaimed that thanks to a miracle her husband survived the 2018 stab wound and now the “Lord” has chosen him to defeat the “demon” embodied by the opposition candidate Luiz Inácio Lula a Silva, of the Workers’ Party (PT). .
According to the latest survey by the Datafolha agency, released last week, Lula adds 47 percent of the voting intentions compared to 32 percent for Bolsonaro with a view to the elections of the October 2nd. The PT’s chances of winning the first round in the first round have decreased but in the event of a runoff, on October 30, his victory seems incontestable: he would be elected with 54 percent compared to 37 for his opponent.
religious activism
Now, in the evangelical segment the favorite for October 2 is Bolsonaro, who adds 59 percent to Lula’s 32.
Those 27 points of advantage are attributed to the emergence of Michelle as the new star in official acts and to the offensive carried out by thousands of shepherds in whose sermons fake news is spread, like the one that assures that in case of a PT victory the temples will be closed.
“The same thing will happen here as in communist countries” declared a woman worried regarding the closure of her church. The woman was interviewed by CBN radio, where a report on religious activism was published, which turned on a warning light in the pet campaign.
One of the singing voices of this narrative is the Pastor Damares Alvesformer Minister of the Family and a kind of lieutenant of the first lady.
Alves, who accuses the PT governments of having encouraged the use of crack in schools, is considered one of the spearheads in Brazil of North American Zionist evangelism.
“Pharisees”
In his first massive campaign act in São Paulo, last Saturday Lula fully entered the preachers dirty war in pursuit of the re-election of the former Army captain.
“I, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, defend the secular State, the State does not have to have a religion. All the churches have to be defended by the State but the churches do not have to have a party, the churches have to take care of the faith and not from candidacies of false prophets and Pharisees who are deceiving the people”.
According to reports in the PT, efforts will be redoubled to reconquer evangelicals, since some of them are not unconditional supporters of the extreme right and already gave Lula their vote in his victorious campaigns in 2002 and 2006.
Perhaps it was following this premise that the former metallurgical worker, well wrapped up in a black shirt to weather the São Paulo cold, recommended taking the political fight inside the temples.
“If we attend church we don’t have to be afraid to talk regarding politics. If the pastor is serious we respect him, but if he is lying, no. You can’t tell lies in the name of God neither here nor anywhere in the world”.
Attached to these sayings of their leader, the PT announced to the Superior Electoral Tribunal that channels were created on social networks specifically aimed at the Protestant electorate, which is contemplated in the legislation.
Christening
Michelle Bolsonaro was born in 1982 at the beginning of a decade marked by the end of the dictatorship and the beginning of a transition to democracy under the military guardianship. Not many remember that it was in the eighties when the evangelical phenomenon in the country that is, until today, the one that concentrates the largest number of Catholics in the world.
Before meeting Congressman Bolsonaro, for whom she worked as a secretary, Michelle was already an evangelical. And it was thanks to the influence of her and other people that the ex-military man (who did not stop being Catholic) approached the movement, until he was baptized in 2016 in the waters of the Jordan River by Pastor Everaldo Pereira.
pan american dream
In the 90s, when the young Michelle de Paula Firmo began to approach the pastors and the electronic bishop Edir Macedo pocketed the first millions thanks to his media businesses, the US agency USAID it strengthened its strategy in favor of evangelization and for changes in the “electoral” behavior of Brazilians, wrote a former member of that organization, Lawrence Harrison.
Harrison’s “Pan-American dream” – which is also that of USAID and the CIA – began to gain ground with business logic and Protestant pragmatism: the “Prosperity Theology” he made his footing in favelas and popular neighborhoods in the face of the setback of the “Liberation Theology” of left-wing Catholicism in which the PT was born in 1980.
If in the 1970s Protestant churches represented less than 5% of the population, at the end of the 1980s they were close to 10% and in 2010 they rose to 22%.
Since in 2020 the government suspended the census, there are no official figures, but some public opinion agencies estimate that the voters are 28 percent of the list.
In sum, this confessional current has indisputable electoral importance, together with the legislative weight of the Bible Benchwith regarding one hundred deputies, and the ideological influence exerted by its television and radio networks, among which the Grupo Récord, of Bishop Macedo, stands out.
Michelle or Mi-Check
In 2018, Bolsonaro’s wife would not have wanted to participate in the campaign due to her shyness. But that embarrassment caused by the cameras was overcome little by little, with successive appearances in year-end messages on radio and television and interventions in protocol events at the Planalto Palace.
Possibly the ease with which he speaks in the official demonstrations is the product of some coach hired by the millionaire team of Bolsonarism, which at the time had the advice of the American Steve Bannonof the former campaign manager Donald Trump.
To the extent that Michelle became more important in the campaign and her voice gained weight within the family “clan” of which the president’s children are a part, more details of her ambitions for power began to be known.
For example, regarding how he exerted his influence so that Pastor Andre Mendonca is elected as the first evangelical in the Federal Supreme Court.
Regardless of the result of the vote set for 41 days, the first lady has already made a foothold in the political field of the extreme right with a flow of popularity that would allow her to be elected senator for Brasilia.
Of course, this capital has its contract. If Michelle was not a preferential target of the opposition or the press before, now she is a character who is being targeted.
This implies the possibility that they will come back to light, perhaps in the campaign, two checks in her name issued by Fabrizio Queiroz, a retired police officer linked to the “militias” of Rio de Janeiro who worked for deputy Bolsonaro for years.
That relationship cloudy of Bolsonarismo with the “militias” is always remembered in the PT, especially by federal deputy Paulo Pimenta, who also likes to replace the name Michelle with the nickname “Mi-Cheque.”
