Jair Messiah Bolsonaro is an ex-military, reserve captain and also a Brazilian politician since the late 1980s. He joined the military in the 1970s, was a paratrooper and reached the rank of captain. Two controversies caused him to go to the reserve.
Bolsonaro began his political life as city councilor from Rio de Janeiro in 1988. Two years later, he was elected Congressman, assuming seven terms in the Chamber of Deputies. In 2018, he ran for president and won the election, establishing a government marred by controversy. He was the first president of the New Republic to seek re-election and be defeated.
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Topics of this article
- 1 - Summary about Jair Messias Bolsonaro
- 2 - Origin of Jair Bolsonaro
- 3 - Military career of Jair Bolsonaro
- 4 - Jair Bolsonaro's political career
- 5 - Government of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022)
- 6 - Defeat in the 2022 election and end of the Bolsonaro government
Summary about Jair Messias Bolsonaro
Jair Messias Bolsonaro is a former military man who entered Brazilian politics.
He was involved in controversy while in the military, including being investigated as a suspect in a bombing.
In 1990, he was elected federal deputy, a position he held until 2018, when he left to run for president.
He became president of Brazil in 2018, winning around 55% of the vote. He maintained a government full of controversies.
He was defeated in the 2022 election, becoming the first president of the New Republic to run for re-election and lose.
Origin of Jair Bolsonaro
Jair Messiah Bolsonaro was born on the day 25th March from 1955, being originally, according to his birth certificate, from the city of Campinas, in the interior of São Paulo. There is, however, a doubt about his place of birth, since there are indications of that he may have been born in Glicério, also in the interior of São Paulo, but he was registered in Campinas.
His parents were called Perci Geraldo Bolsonaro and Olinda Bonturi, a couple who had a total of six children. Throughout his childhood, Bolsonaro lived in different cities, settling for a few years in Eldorado Paulista, city in Vale do Ribeira, where his father worked as a practical dentist and administrator of farms.
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Jair Bolsonaro's military career
Jair Bolsonaro's military career began in the 1970s when he entered the Army Cadet Preparatory School, remaining there for a few months before entering the Academia Militar das Agulhas Negras, where he completed his studies in 1977. Along with the officer preparation course, he also completed a parachuting course.
The two courses were held in the state of Rio de Janeiro, the Agulhas Negras course in Resende and the skydiving course in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Bolsonaro still graduated in Physical Education from the Army and became a master in skydiving.He served as a paratrooper in the Armed Forces.
In the Army, Bolsonaro managed to reach thecaptain's rank but it also accumulated controversy. First, in September 1986, Jair Bolsonaro had an interview published in the magazine Look in which he denounced that the number of soldiers who abandoned their careers was the result of supposedly low wages.
As a result of this interview, given without the consent of his superiors, he committed an infraction and was sentenced to 15 days in prison. A little less than a year later, he was accused by a news report of being the author of a plan that would explode bombs in barracks in Rio de Janeiro.
That plan was named Alley sin sexit and was intended to affect the position of Leônidas Pires Gonçalves as Minister of the Army and to protest against the low wages of the military. In the case of wages, the attacks were organized to happen if the wage readjustment promised by the president Jose Sarney stay below 60%.
Investigations were immediately launched against Bolsonaro and another captain named Fábio Passos da Silva. Bolsonaro and Passos denied involvement in the operation, but an investigation carried out by the Army itself decided to expulsion of Bolsonaro and Passos of the Armed Forces for their involvement in the operation.
There were witnesses and written evidence of Bolsonaro's involvement — a sketch (hand-drawn sketch) of the position of the bombs. The case was taken to the Superior Military Court, which declared that the evidence was insufficient, and the two captains were not removed. Some time later, the Federal Police concluded that the sketch had actually been drawn up by Bolsonaro.
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Jair Bolsonaro's political career
The controversies in which Bolsonaro was involved in the Army gave great projection to his name. With that, he went to the reserve, as he had been elected, in 1988, for the position of councilor of the city of Rio de Janeiro by the Christian Democratic Party (PDC). He was short-lived in office, as In 1990, he was elected federal deputy.
He took office in February 1991 and, already in his first term, experienced one of the most remarkable events in recent Brazilian history: the impeachment of the president Fernando Collor. Jair Bolsonaro supported the impeachment of that president, succeeded by his vice-president, Itamar Franco, in December 1992.
In 1993, Jair Bolsonaro was involved in a controversy when he defended the return of an exceptional regime in Brazil., on the grounds that there were many laws hindering the government and that, in the case of an exception regime, it would be easier to govern, as it was only necessary to abolish the law that was “disturbing”. A deputy at the time, Vital Rego, even asked for a criminal action against Bolsonaro for the Attorney General's Office, but nothing was done.
Another striking statement by Jair Bolsonaro in the 1990s was his defense of the computerization of voting. In other words, Jair Bolsonaro advocated the creation of electronic voting machines, and this happened at an event at the Clube Militar in 1993. Electronic ballot boxes began to be used in our country in 1996 and consolidated thanks to their security and agility in counting.
Jair Bolsonaro's presence in the Chamber of Deputies was frequent for more than two decades, Deputy from February 1991 to January 2019, when he left office to assume the presidency. During this period, he was elected by different parties, namely:
Christian Democratic Party (PDC);
Progressive Reform Party (PPR);
Brazilian Progressive Party (PPB);
Progressive Party (PP).
During his last term, Bolsonaro migrated to the Christian Social Party, the PSC. Between 1991 and 2017, Jair Bolsonaro presented 171 projects in the Chamber of Deputies, which included bills and supplementary bills, proposals for constitutional amendments, among others.
Of this total, only two projects were approved: one that authorized a reduction in the IPI tax for computer equipment and another project that authorized the use of phosphoethanolamine for cancer treatment, although the effectiveness of this medicine is questioned by the scientific community due to the lack of evidence about its benefits.
Government of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022)
The scenario of radicalization of Brazilian politics allowed Jair Bolsonaro to be launched into the political debate for the position of President. To make his candidacy viable, he joined the Social Liberal Party (PSL)and chose Hamilton Mourão as his vice-presidential candidate.
The candidacy took place in the 2018 presidential election. With base on a liberal platform, Bolsonaro defended proposals such as the privatization of PetrobrasThes, merger of ministries, creation of civic-military schools, facilitated access of the population to weapons, end of demarcations of indigenous lands and quilombolas, among others.
During the election campaign, Jair Bolsonaro was the victim of an attack in the city of Juiz de Fora, when it was injured by a knife blow. He underwent surgery, in addition to being hospitalized for a few days, but he recovered well. The author of the attack, Adélio Bispo, was arrested, and the inquiry conducted by the Federal Police concluded, in 2020, that he acted on his own. A report by the Federal Court also concluded that Adélio Bispo has a permanent paranoid delusional disorder.
The attack gave more strength to Jair Bolsonaro's candidacy and he emerged victorious. In the first round, Bolsonaro obtained 46.03% of the votes and won O second round of the dispute against Fernando Haddad, candidate of the Workers' Party (PT), obtaining 55.13% of the votes, against 44.87% of his opponent. Jair Bolsonaro assumed the presidency on January 1, 2019.
His government assumed conservative values and liberals and was marked by a series of controversies. Bolsonaro had to face bitter results, especially in the economic area, managed by Paulo Guedes, Minister of Economy.
In your government, the country showed irregular economic growth: in 2019, it was 1.9%; in 2020, the GDP retreated 3.9% and, in 2021, increased to 4.6%. However, this growth rate for 2019 and 2021 was not transmitted to the population, as O unemploymentwent up from 11.9% to 14.4%.
Labor entities pointed out that the situation of workers in general was precarious. Furthermore, the cost of living has risen considerably during that government and the inflation jumped from 4.31% in 2019 to 10.06% in 2021, falling to 5.79% in 2022.
The inflationary increase, which in itself has a direct impact on workers' income, was accompanied by low wage increases in terms of minimum wage. During the Bolsonaro government, there were no real readjustments in the value of the minimum wage, as the readjustments were carried out as a replacement for inflation measured by the National Consumer Price Index (INPC).
In previous governments, the increase was based on the increase in GDP and the inflation rate. This guaranteed a real increase in the value of the minimum wage in Brazil. Finally, the salary increase in 2021 was only 4.1%, below official inflation (which was 4.3%) and, in 2022, the increase was 10.1%|1|. In the last year, the Bolsonaro government announced an 8.9% salary increase.
The consequence of this scenario was that Brazil witnessed an increase in poverty, social inequality and hunger. Studies have shown that the population in poverty jumped from 7.6% to 10.8% between 2020 and 2021 and, in extreme poverty, from 4.2% to 5.9% in the same period|2|.
O Bolsonaro government was also marked bythem impacts of pandemic of covid-19. The disease arrived and spread in the country in early 2020, causing thousands of deaths throughout 2020 and 2021. Bolsonaro's government was marked by negligence and slowness in actions to contain the spread of the disease.
One Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry was carried out to investigate the crimes committed by the presidency during the pandemic and the final report of this CPI indicated that the president committed the following crimes|3|:
epidemic resulting in death;
violation of preventive health measure;
quackery;
incitement to crime;
private document forgery;
irregular use of public funds;
prevarication;
liability crimes;
crimes against humanity;
The president made controversial statements minimizing the effects of the disease, mocking citizens who fell ill and died and questioned the effectiveness of the vaccine produced to fight covid-19. Until December 23, 2022, in the last days of the Bolsonaro government, the total number of deaths from covid-19 was 692,854 Brazilians.
Defeat in the 2022 election and end of the Bolsonaro government
In 2022, Jair Bolsonaro ran for re-election for the position of president by the Liberal Party (PL). Your major competitor in this dispute was Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, candidate for the Workers' Party (PT). Lula was able to participate in the presidential election after his convictions in court were annulled by the STF because Judge Sérgio Moro was considered incompetent to judge Lula's cases, in addition to being partial in his verdict.
The presidential election took place in a scenario of great apprehension, especially due to the president's vague statements about whether or not he would accept a defeat for Lula. In addition, Bolsonaro made repeated statements in which he questioned the legitimacy and fairness of the brazilian electoral process. At the end of the first round, Bolsonaro obtained 43.20% of the votes.
In the second round, the dispute with Lula resulted in the defeat ofIt is Bolsonaro. The then president obtained 49.10% of the votes against Lula's 50.90%. It was the most disputed presidential election in the history of the New Republic and the dispute was resolved with a difference of just over two million votes.
With the defeat, Bolsonaro became the first president of the New Republic to run for re-election and be defeated. The president refused to stay in Brazil to carry out the traditional delivery of the presidential sash to the new president and traveled to the United States in the last days of his government. This breach of protocol happened for the first time since Brazil was redemocratized. On January 1, 2023, Lula assumed his third term as president.
Grades
|1| How the minimum wage lost recomposition in the Bolsonaro government. To access, click here.
|2| Bolsonaro's legacy includes records of poverty, inequality and hunger. To access, click here.
|3| See the crimes imputed to Bolsonaro in the final report of the Pandemic CPI. To access, click here.
Image credits:
[1] BW Press It is Shutterstock
[2] Isaac Fontana It is Shutterstock
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