RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – From the roadside, Maria, a 61-year-old fruit vendor, has seen street traffic increase since Thursday, August 13th. The black cars, escorted by ambulances, vans, and motorcycles, as well as the hooded men who stopped traffic for the motorcade to pass, and the unusual buzzing of helicopters, attracted attention.
These were the preparations for the arrival of Jair Bolsonaro in the city of Barra dos Coqueiros, located thirty kilometers from Aracaju, in Sergipe. The street vendor had already heard about the President’s visit but was not too eager to go there. Instead, she planned to wave when he passed.
“If he stops, I’ll say: ‘My president, do some shopping here and I’m really liking you'”. Maria’s good opinion of Bolsonaro is recent and has a quite straightforward reason: in April, she received a little portion of the R$167 billion (US$33.4 billion) that the federal government has already transferred to needy families because of the pandemic (suspicious and fearful of losing the emergency aid, she chose not to disclose her surname).
In the Fernando Collor neighborhood, one of Aracaju’s humblest, another vendor was also aware in advance of the President’s arrival. Before the pandemic, 39-year-old Edivânia Cardoso was a street vendor selling cell phone cables downtown. She managed to earn an average of R$700 per month.
Unable to head out to work, she decided to turn her home window into a small candy store. With the improvisation, added to the government’s R$1,200 payments, her income doubled. She is even determined to preserve her small enterprise when everything goes back to normal.
Edivânia and Maria are two examples that explain the sudden acceptance of Bolsonaro in the Northeast. According to Datafolha, the President’s popularity soared from 27 to 33 percent and his rejection dropped from 52 to 35 percent between June and August.
Former PT (Worker’s Party) voters Edivânia and Maria plan to change their votes in 2022. “When Lula was a candidate, I voted for Lula,” Edivânia says. “Then in the last election, Lula left and the other one came, that boy… Adauto, right?”
In 2018, the Northeast, with 27 percent of the electorate, was the only region in the country to impose a defeat on Bolsonaro in the second round, giving nearly 70 percent of the valid votes to PT’s Fernando Haddad – the abovementioned “Adauto”. Realizing the favorable trend, the President has already visited Ceará, Piauí, Bahia, and Sergipe in less than two months – and intends to intensify his agenda until the end of the year.
The route is typically similar: the inauguration of public works, a crowd, speeches, photos. It was no different in Aracaju. At the city’s airport, crowds and countless militants with no masks. Squeezed over the railing, a woman shouted: “There is no coronavirus here!” And the supporters amended in chorus: “It’s the chloroquine, the chloroquine!…”.
The President remained in the landing area for only five minutes, was hoisted by security guards, filmed by advisors, and posted everything on social media before heading to Barra dos Coqueiros by helicopter, where he inaugurated a private thermal power plant. The Northeast is embracing Bolsonaro.
Source: Veja