MAGA Playbook: Bolsonaro Allies Paralyze Congress
On Tuesday, August 5, Brazil’s Congressional President Hugo Motta (PB) from the conservative Republicanos party left Brasilia on a business trip, turning control of the floor over to his elected Vice President, Altineu Cortes (RJ), a member of Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL).
Free speech absolutism. The caption under the 1928 Nazi propaganda poster on the left said, “one alone out of 2 billion humans on earth is not allowed to speak in Germany.”
On Wednesday, protests resumed, with several lawmakers reviving an old Nazi trope by taping over their mouths. They cited Glenn Greenwald-style free speech absolutism to protest a Supreme Court order barring former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently under house arrest, from using social media after he repeatedly used it to incite violence against the court and its ministers. Their main demand, however, was that Congress grant full amnesty for Jair Bolsonaro and let him run in the 2026 presidential elections.
A visibly irritated Congressman Motta canceled his trip and returned to Brasilia on Wednesday afternoon. After meeting with PL lawmakers for two hours he returned to the floor. With a group of congressional police officers standing behind him, he ordered them to leave the stage, sat at the table, reopened the session and said, “Democracy can’t be negotiated. We can’t allow personal or electoral projects to be prioritized over what is greater than all of us: our citizens.”
Journalists immediately began working to find out what kind of compromise the notoriously fickle Motta struck with the opposition. O Globo and Folha de S. Paulo’s UOL reported that the PL made two demands: 1) Amnesty for Jair Bolsonaro and his allies who have been indicted in two investigations by the Federal Police and Attorney General’s Office for plotting a military coup; and 2) A constitutional amendment that would end privileged jurisdiction for federal deputies and senators.
Privileged jurisdiction is a form of parliamentary immunity established in Brazil’s 1988 Constitution, which was designed to protect high ranking elected officials from frivolous lawsuits and criminal procedures that could distract them from doing their jobs. It stipulates that standing presidents, vice presidents and federal lawmakers cannot be tried in the lower courts, leaving the Supreme Court as the only body that can oversee investigations and prosecute them.
What was designed as a form of protecting lawmakers became a thorn in their side when Supreme Court Minister Flavio Dino opened an investigation into embezzlement from the Bolsonaro administrations, “secret budget”, which saw over R$ 50 billion in unrestricted funds allocated for parliamentary amendments. Today, 7 Supreme Court ministers are overseeing embezzlement investigations against 80 lawmakers. The complete list hasn’t been released, but it’s said to include several lawmakers from center-right parties that comprise the largest block in Lula’s governing coalition, with many others coming from Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL).
Ending privileged jurisdiction would mean that corruption cases against lawmakers would have to go through the lower court system before reaching the Supreme Court, a process that normally lasts from years to decades in Brazil (the only case that ever moved quickly was the US DOJ-backed Car Wash investigation against Lula, which went through the TRF-4 circuit court in a record breaking 40 minutes). In practical terms this means that, if passed, lawmakers wouldn’t ever face prison sentences until years after their mandates ended.
“The end of privileged jurisdiction is uniting nearly everyone right now,” an unnamed lawmaker who took part in the negotiations with Motta told a reporter from Globo.“Amnesty doesn’t. I believe that next week we are going to see the evolution of an end of privileged jurisdiction, with no progress made towards amnesty.”
Motta says he will continue to block the amnesty bill from a floor vote, and Jair Bolsonaro’s own lawyers say they believe his imprisonment is irreversible.
Meanwhile the Trump administration is doubling down on its threats against Brazil’s judiciary. Yesterday Trump’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy threatened to apply Magnitsky sanctions to any other Supreme Court Justice who supports Minister Alexandre de Moraes.
The Bolsonaro family’s recent behaviour has prompted an official from Brazil’s intelligence agency ABIN, to say that he believes everything they are now doing is being scripted by the CIA. Trump’s tariffs certainly appear to be a move straight out of the US regime change playbook. After all, destabilizing foreign enemies economies has been a tactic used by the US all over the world for decades. For example, the US-led boycott on Chilean copper in 1973 was made in response to Nixon’s order to “make their economy scream.” The joint US/Brazil Operation Car Wash judge Sergio Moro’s move to deliberately bankrupt Brazil’s 5 largest construction and engineering companies in 2015, which led to 4.4 million direct and indirect job layoffs, was a key tool in engineering the drop in popularity for President Dilma Rousseff which led to the 2016 coup process which culminated in Lula’s arbitrary election season arrest and Bolsonaro’s rise to the presidency.
However, the World has changed. During Lula’s first two terms in office, the US was Brazil’s largest trading partner. Today, China does three times more trade with Brazil than the US does. This morning Chinese press agency Xinhua reported that Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi told Brazil’s presidential advisor on foreign affairs, Celso Amorim, that China will work with Brazil to offset the damage caused by the US tariffs.
“China firmly supports Brazil in defending its right to development and opposing the bullying practices of arbitrary tariffs,” he said. “As the largest developing countries in the eastern and western hemispheres respectively, China and Brazil have always supported each other, closely coordinated, and firmly safeguarded the legitimate interests of their own as well as the common interests of the Global South countries.”
As for yesterday’s MAGA-style protest, Hugo Motta says if they try it again he’ll suspend Congress for six months. Bolsonaro is expected to be sentenced in September and is facing a possible prison sentence of up to 44 years.
This originally appeared on De-Linking Brazil.
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