Bolsonaro ramps up preparations to hold on to power in defiance of electorate’s will

A president complaining about fraud in an election he won? Threatening not to recognise the result of the next vote? And refusing to commit to a peaceful transition of power?

No, not Donald Trump laying the groundwork for his doomed putsch attempt after last November's US presidential poll. Instead it is Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro cribbing from the American's playbook as he ramps up preparations for holding on to power whatever voters decide in elections due in October next year.

Whether the far-right leader is aiming at some sort of extra-constitutional manoeuvre is now the subject of intense national debate. Just search for golpe – the Portuguese word for coup – on Brazilian media. A risk, says one former president. Unlikely, says another, but that could change.

Many other politicians and commentators are in no doubt about Bolsonaro’s anti-democratic intentions, especially now he is intensifying his campaign against his country’s well-regarded voting system.

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Despite failing to provide any of the evidence he claims to have that the current computerised system is subject to fraud, he has demanded to have it replaced by paper ballots. The country’s electoral authorities and congress have, as expected, refused this as unjustified and impractical.

This refusal might have been exactly what Bolsonaro wanted. It enables those of “bad faith”, in the words of supreme court justice Luís Roberto Barroso, who currently chairs the electoral court, “to create confusion so they can attempt to sour the game and strike a golpe” – the word for coup being the same as for blow.

And the former army captain is showing plenty of bad faith. Having demanded something that he was never likely to get – paper ballots – Bolsonaro is now energetically proclaiming that, if held under the current system, next year’s election will be rigged and he will not be bound by the result.

“I will turn over the presidential sash to whoever beats me at the ballot box cleanly. By fraud, no,” he warns, when by cleanly he means using paper ballots.

On Thursday he upped the ante: "Either we have clean elections in Brazil or we won't have elections."

This sort of coup-mongering rhetoric comes dressed in the spectre of violence if he does not get his way. Last month he warned of a “convulsion” in the country if there were no paper ballots.

Democratic rupture

There are other reasons to believe Bolsonaro is planning on a democratic rupture. He has long made clear his disdain for democracy, telling army cadets earlier this year “if it was up to me we would not have this regime we are living under”. He is also vigorously seeking to align key state institutions crucial in any power grab with his personal political ambitions, among them the intelligence services, state police forces and the military.

He also has a motive. His disapproval rating is soaring as his administration’s mishandling of the pandemic collides with mounting evidence that elements within it sought to make illicit fortunes by corrupting the government’s botched vaccination effort. The loss of power could open the door to years of legal jeopardy.

Polling shows his main rival in next year's election, former left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, far ahead of him, prompting the predictable response from Bolsonaro that the courts sprung Lula from jail after his convictions for corruption to make him president again via fraud.

“This is not going to happen,” he stated, unilaterally declaring his main opponent illegitimate.

So the direction of travel is clear. Which is not to say Bolsonaro will get away with his own putsch attempt. He has support in some key institutions, especially among the state police rank and file. But close observers say the military high command, a key arbiter in any constitutional crisis, would be unlikely to embark on such a reckless adventure.

After all, the president is coup-mongering from a position of weakness, not strength. He has shown himself to be corrupt, incompetent and erratic when not unhinged by his violent impulses.

He is already assured a place in the history books as one of Brazil’s worst ever presidents. It would be an odd call for the generals, the self-styled guardians of the republic, to defend his personal interests over the national good.