Brazil: Conservatives Protest to Pressure Congress into Passing Bolsonaro Reforms

Brazilians demonstrated across the country on Sunday to pressure the country’s Congress into passing a range of reforms put forward by President Jair Bolsonaro.

Demonstrations took place across 300 towns and cities to pressure lawmakers into passing a range of legislative reforms put forward by Bolsonaro, who took office this year. The most significant of those reforms are major changes to the country’s pension system, which currently allows many Brazilians to retire in their 50s, a reality placing strain on the public deficit.

Bolsonaro is struggling to pass his reforms through Congress, leading many of his supporters to believe that the legislature is intentionally trying to sabotage his political agenda.

“We need to clean out Congress,” Neymar de Menezes, a 45-year-old construction contractor, told the Associated Press. “Unfortunately, all the deputies there are compromised and all about deal-making. Bolsonaro is fighting them by himself.”

The protests were also intended as a counter-demonstration to protests this month led by Brazil’s National Student Union after the Education Ministry announced a freeze of up to 30 percent of discretionary spending as part of a series of government spending cuts. Bolsonaro later dismissed the protesters as “imbeciles.”

The 63-year-old army captain decided against participating in the demonstrations this weekend, but did tweet footage of one of the rallies in the city of São Luís, Maranhão:

On Monday, Bolsonaro took to Twitter to celebrate the “peaceful character” of the protests and suggest they were part of a wider movement towards a more representative democracy.

“I believe that Brazil is increasingly moving towards the ripening of its democracy, with representatives sensitive to the desires of society,” he wrote. “The peaceful character of today’s acts translates the hope and trust of the people put in the commitment that we as politicians have in the future of the country.”

Bolsonaro’s election last October came as a major shock to the Brazilian establishment. Before his election and center-left predecessor Michel Temer, Brazil had been governed by left-wing presidents for over a decade, leading to widespread corruption and a major economic crash in 2014.

Bolsonaro’s poll ratings have plummeted since he took office this year. A Sunday editorial in the right-leaning Estado de São Paulo described his support as “melting away before our eyes,” as 36 percent of voters now consider his administration “bad” or “awful,” compared to just 17 percent in February.

“We must consider that there is no other movement in the country with structure as solid and organized as the left, which for decades occupied spaces and rigged institutions to get wherever it went,” Bolsonaro contended. “Within this context, adding to the disinformation and lack of support from various sectors to the peculiarities previously mentioned, what we saw yesterday was extremely significant and historical. We can’t ignore it.”

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