“Only a miracle can save Argentina’s economy”: Brazilian President

BRASILIA, Aug 3, 2021, MercoPress. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has said in his social media broadcast that “only a miracle will save the Argentine economy,” as he referred to the administration of his colleague Alberto Fernández as “a regime that did not work anywhere in the world,” MercoPress reported.

Bolsonaro made those statements while addressing the likelihood of fraud in his country’s elections next year through the use of electronic voting machines.

“Look what is happening in Argentina. I was there in 2019 and said that if the left came back to power, we were going to need a hosted operation in Rio Grande do Sul. Class A is already beginning to leave Argentina. Only a miracle will save the Argentine economy,” Bolsonaro pinted out.

“Direct interference by President Fernández in the means of production, he banned meat exports for 30 days saying that the price was going to drop so that people could buy it… Not only did the price go up…” said Bolsonaro as he explained that domestic supply was also cut down considerably thanks to the measure.

“I have shown where that other side wants to return and how the countries they have supported are doing. I’m not going to talk any more about Cuba and Venezuela, let’s talk about Argentina. The regime they defend did not work anywhere in the world. We are all going to pay a high price if the choices are wrong. We need democratic and reliable ballots in Brazil,” he insisted.

Bolsonaro’s demand for a reform to the electoral system, which would represents a return to printed vote has opened political battle fronts in Congress and before the Federal Supreme Court (STF).

The Brazilian president has explicitly warned that “without a printed vote there are no elections next year” and that he would not concede defeat if beaten through fraud.

In this scenatio Electoral Court Chief Justice Luis Roberto Barroso, also a member of the STF construed Bolsonaro’s message: “The discourse is that if I lose it is because there was fraud is a pronouncement by someone who does not accept democracy.”

According to the latest polls, if the elections were today, former President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva would beat Bolsonaro in the first round.

“I have no way to prove that the elections were or were not fraud. But I do have clues. And a crime is revealed with several indications,” the President said in his broadcast message.

Bolsonaro also highlighted the fact that since April 2020, the STF had granted state and municipal governments the autonomy to carry out their own plans to prevent and fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Still, measures taken or not taken in the sanitarry efforts are underscored as Bolsonaro’s responsibility and are under investigation by a Senatorial Comittee knwon as CPI, on which Bolsonaro has said he could not care less. But it is also true that since last year the Brazilian president spoke of a “little flu” and that, based on that diagnosis, he wanted to prevent states from imposing quarantines.

Based on the STF’s ruling, Bolsonaro insisted on his innocence regarding any wrongdoing in the fight against covid-19 since he had been stripped of all powers by the STF.

STF Chief Justice Luis Fux is expected to deliver a speech Monday ruffling feather between the Judiciary and the Executive and also against the chiefs of the armed forces, who last week told House of Deputies Speaker Arthur Lira that the elections would be “canceled” in case of “maintaining the current voting system,” which has led analysts to speak of the existence of a “military party [with] political ambitions” in Brazil.