Good morning! Today, one far-right expert suggests Bolsonaro’s ‘coup is already underway.’ Electoral judges unlikely to hit back hard against political Sep. 7 rallies. Air travel beginning to soar once more, though Brazil’s HDI falls.
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‘A coup is already underway’
Professor João Cezar de Castro Rocha, one of the foremost experts on the Brazilian far-right, told Brasília correspondent Cedê Silva that President Jair Bolsonaro’s Independence Day demonstrations on Wednesday were a clear sign that a coup is already underway.
How so? In his speech in Brasília, Mr. Bolsonaro pledged, if re-elected, to “bring within the bounds of the Constitution all who dare stay out of them” — alluding to the Supreme Court.
- For Mr. Castro Rocha, this was a clear threat to actors and institutions that still resist the president’s whims. “The Bolsonaro administration is clearly a government against the state. It does not accept any limits, controls, or brakes on its lust for power.”
Why it matters. Mr. Bolsonaro has tested the endurance of Brazilian democratic institutions, which at...