Brazil's Conservative Truckers Continue Roadblocks After Bolsonaro's Non-Concession Speech

Truckers supporting conservative Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and their allies are currently maintaining 178 roadblocks nationwide, the nation’s transit police announced on Wednesday morning, protesting the election of leftist convicted felon Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Sunday’s presidential election.

Lula – who was allowed on the ballot despite being sentenced to upwards of 20 years in prison for accepting bribes during his last presidential term after the nation’s top court overturned the conviction on a technicality – defeated Bolsonaro by little more than one percentage point on Sunday. According to the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), which administers national elections, Lula received about 2 million more votes than the incumbent Bolsonaro. The 77-year-old hardline socialist is expected to assume the top office on January 1.

Bolsonaro supporters, many of them truckers, began blocking major highways on Monday in response to the news. The protests do not appear to have any organized leadership or one discrete set of demands. Some participants are protesting that Lula was allowed on the ballot at all (convicted criminals are not allowed to run for the presidency as per Brazilian law). Others have objected to the TSE’s widespread censorship of relevant information, such as banning the Bolsonaro campaign from referring to Lula as “corrupt” and, according to at least one news network, banning journalists from discussing Lula’s corruption case on its airwaves at all.

Other protesters have contested the election, claiming the socialists committed fraud, though no concrete evidence has surfaced of any election fraud and the Bolsonaro campaign itself has not made such accusations. Still others have simply demanded a military coup to ensure Lula does not return to power.

The news broadcaster Jovem Pan, citing the nation’s Federal Highway Police, reported on Wednesday morning that 167 highways nationwide were blocked at press time; the day began with 178 such anti-Lula blockades that police are working on dismantling one by one.

Federal police have documented 563 highway protests since the election on Sunday. At their peak, the protests affected 21 of the country’s 26 states and the Brasilia Federal District. Currently, police are addressing roadblocks in 17 states.

Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) Minister Alexandre de Moraes, the most powerful person on the supreme court and the head of the TSE, ordered the nation’s military police to attack the roadblocks and has ordered fines of 100,000 reais ($19,440.88) an hour for anyone involved in the protests. Moraes participated in the vote to overturn Lula’s corruption conviction and has been a champion of heavy anti-conservative censorship, most prominently ordering violent police raids on comedians and Youtubers for supporting Bolsonaro (“fake news”) in 2020. Opponents have objected that, as a judge, de Moraes does not have the constitutional power to use executive branch power, and Bolsonaro reportedly sought an abuse of power probe against him in May, but it did not amount to any meaningful action.

While the protests appear to have diminished in number somewhat, growing numbers of Bolsonaro supporters appear to be turning out. On Tuesday, the left-wing newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo reported that families, including infants, are beginning to become a more common sight at the roadblocks, complicating police action to clear the roads. Folha observed that families appear to be positioning themselves close to news cameras to protect their children from potential police brutality.

Videos of the trucker protests, which number in the hundreds across the country, surfacing on Monday and Tuesday showed protesters shouting for Bolsonaro to weigh in on the election. Bolsonaro did not issue any remarks on Sunday night and was silent for the entirety of Monday.

Zé Trovão, a trucker who has become a social media leader of the protests, told the Jovem Pan news show Pânico on Tuesday that fellow truckers were telling him “they are waiting for President Bolsonaro to speak.” The interview occurred before Bolsonaro’s remarks that same day. The trucker, whose real name is Marco Antônio Pereira Gomes, emphasized that the protests are a response to Lula’s criminal record.

“People just can’t swallow this result, beyond all the situations that the candidate who won these elections had to go through,” he explained. “People are extremely outraged with this situation, seeing a person who had judicial problems occuping the presidential seat.”

On Tuesday, Bolsonaro delivered a short speech in which he encouraged “peaceful” protests, did not mention or reference Lula at all, and vowed to adhere to the nation’s constitution.

“The current popular movements are the fruit of indignation and a feeling of injustice about how the electoral process went about,” Bolsonaro said on Tuesday. “Peaceful protests will always be welcome, but our methods cannot be those of the left, which has always hurt the people, such as the invasion of property, the destruction of historical sites, and attacks on the right to come and go.”

Bolsonaro thanked supporters and noted their successes in congressional and gubernatorial elections, significantly hampering Lula’s ability to enact his agenda.

“Our dreams are more alive than ever,” he declared.

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