“What time did you start doing this, Jer?” asks prison director Rita Gayo, noting the pettiness in her tone of voice. His interlocutor, former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), admitted that he had used a hot iron the previous afternoon to damage his ankle bracelet. “Curiosity,” he says in the video, in which we hear only voices and see the damaged body. Bolsonaro will end up being arrested at the Federal Police headquarters in Brasilia.
In the whole process, the single image of the former agent reduces his personality to a shadow.
In 2018, when he was arrested, current President Lula (PT) held a media event, leaving the headquarters of the Metalworkers Union, in São Bernardo do Campo, in the arms of his supporters.
For political allies and researchers on the subject, Bolsonaro was unable to benefit politically from his arrest, leaving a vacuum in the right, which is now trying to reorganize itself.
Federal MP Rosanna Valle (PL-SP) considers that the former president was already serving a precautionary measure at his home at the time when Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the STF (Federal Supreme Court), decided to detain him in pretrial detention, under the pretext of flight risk.
The judge confirmed this week that Bolsonaro will serve his sentence for the attempted coup at the National Front headquarters. In this context, the representative says, there was no room to mobilize supporters.
“Right-wingers feel trapped, because we think our freedom is restricted,” Valle says.
“I do not believe in weakening Bolsonaro, there is no abandoning Bolsonaro. What is there is caution and care not to increase this climate of exclusion. The right is re-expressing itself.”
The lawmaker also says that PL Mulheur, headed by former First Lady Michelle Bolsonaro, could be an asset in the process of rewriting the constitution. Michel’s trips will continue until the end of the year, and there is a desire, according to the parliamentarian, to strengthen the group’s work with conservative families.
In his decision for preventive detention, Moraes noted that agents must respect Bolsonaro’s dignity, and carry out the arrest warrant early in the morning, without handcuffs and, above all, without exposure to the media. He may cite Lula’s precedent of keeping Bolsonaro in the National Front, not in prison.
Seven years ago, Judge Sergio Moro did not ignore the media issue. He also objected to the use of handcuffs during Lula’s arrest, and ordered him to serve the sentence in a reserved room at the National Front headquarters in Curitiba, where the Workers’ Party member will remain for 580 days.
At that time, Lava Jato, and Lula were convicted of corruption and money laundering crimes in the Guaruja triple case.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to overturn the convictions in 2021, deeming the Paraná court incompetent to rule on those cases, after the revelation of letters revealing conversations between Moro and the operation’s prosecutors.
In any case, the measures taken by the then judge, now a senator for the Brazilian Union Party, to prevent exploitation of the media at the time of Lula’s arrest, proved ineffective.
From April 5 to 7, 2018, a Workers’ Party member turned the headquarters of the ABC metalworkers’ union, in São Bernardo do Campo (SP), into a bunker, delaying the work of federal agents.
When he surrendered, he showed a photo of himself being held by his supporters gathered at the door of the building. The photo will be covered by foreign media. He stole the spotlight for himself, and gave a speech in which he said that he was no longer a human being, but an idea.
At that time, he also recorded a series of PT campaign videos for Planalto. Federal Representative María do Rosario (PT-RS), who followed the moments before the surrender, appreciates that Lula managed to keep the PT’s struggle together, something that Bolsonaro did not know how to do.
“No one hesitated in the face of what could happen to Lula,” he says. “The president’s speech reconnected the PT to its historical foundation.” “Bolsonaro has a bloc of divided parties and only has the support of fanatics.”
She says that it is too early to declare the end of Bolsonarianism, as, according to her, the new right-wing leaders must dialogue, in the next elections, with the legacy of the former president.
Arthur Etuaso, a professor of communications at PUC-Rio and a researcher on the relationship between media and politics, agrees that the Labor MP managed to mobilize left-wing voters before and while he was in prison.
He says: “What is happening now is a vacuum on the right, and a dispute over who will replace Bolsonaro.” “On the left, there was no such thing, and at no time was Lula’s leadership questioned.” There are strategies behind this, of course.
For the professor, the Labor member succeeded in presenting himself as a victim during the process he faced. In the case of Bolsonaro, Ituaço highlights the role the special task force played in preventing the former president from exploiting the prison politically.
He says: “If a protest was organized around his apartment, this would lead to a media phenomenon, similar to the Lula incident.”
According to Leandro Aguiar, PhD in Communications from the University of Pennsylvania, Lula and Bolsonaro showed very different attitudes towards prison: Lula aimed to present himself as a martyr, while Bolsonaro asked for clemency even before his conviction, and showed individualistic behavior.
From Aguiar’s point of view, the outcome of the coup plot, with the ankle bracelet video, is reminiscent of scenes from a B-movie with typical Rolado plots and characters, including a hero who wants to satisfy narcissistic pleasures. He says: “The martyr needs to accept martyrdom, and individuals do not make good martyrs.”