DOUBLE TROUBLE

Brazil is being attacked by two dreadful enemies—Covid-19 is killing its society and life as we know, while President Bolsonaro is chipping away at the country’s democracy

- MILAN SIME MARTINIC/Sao Paulo

It is 6:49pm in São Paulo. The silence of the quarantine is broken by shouts unleashed from deep within desperate souls. “Fora Bolsonaro (Get out, Bolsonaro),” they say, “to save our lives.” The Covid-19 pandemic is only one

half of the double-barrelled cannon of fear and dread pointed at the people of Brazil, the second most-populous country in the Americas and the second most affected in the world by the virus. The other half is the inflexibility of its far right president Jair Messias Bolsonaro, who has been actively undermining quarantine and preventative measures adopted by its states in favour of a machismo that sells well with some 25 per cent of the population—the ones who join the president in his mask-less, gun-toting, flag-waving rallies, calling for the opening of malls and schools. Under the smokescreen of political controversy and the fog of war against an invisible enemy, Brazilians are fighting for their lives.

In São Paulo, the country’s most populous city and the current epicentre of the pandemic in Latin America, frustration boils over whenever Bolsonaro appears on television. Residents stand at their windows, banging pots and shouting “Fora Bolsonaro”.

The state of São Paulo, the first to register a Covid-19 case in Brazil, has 1.23 lakh confirmed cases and 8,276 deaths as on June 6. Panic is palpable in the streets as masked people could be heard shouting at others to stay safely away, a man at an ATM breathing uneasy at people forming a queue, another one holding up his open palms to stop others from entering the elevator when it opened at an intermediate floor.