“Argentina is Increasingly Closer to Venezuela,” Bolsonaro Affirms

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – President Jair Bolsonaro once again attacked the results of Argentina’s PASO primary elections on Sunday, August 11th, in which Alberto Fernández achieved a broad victory over current president Mauricio Macri.

The Brazilian president’s words were written, as is his custom, in his Twitter account, where he had previously expressed his discontent with the PASO’s results in Argentina.

On this occasion, the new tweet by the “former captain of the Brazilian army, elected 38th president of the Federative Republic of Brazil” — as defined in his social media profile — is headed by a biblical quote from the gospel of St. John: “And they shall know the truth, and the truth shall set them free.”

Under this gospel quote, Bolsonaro wrote: “With the possible return of the São Paulo Forum group to Argentina, now the people are massively pulling their money out of banks. Argentina, because of its populism, is getting closer and closer to Venezuela.”

The São Paulo Forum is an organization made up of leftist political parties from numerous Latin American countries. With his message, the president of Brazil presents the Frente de Todos coalition as part of that forum, or at least, in a position aligned to that movement.

Shortly after, the president of Brazil tweeted again, once more including a biblical quote in his harsh political position against what he terms populism: “He who tills his land will have plenty of food, but he who follows empty pursuits will have poverty in plenty.” This time, the quote corresponds to verse nineteen in chapter eighteen of the book of proverbs.

Other messages from Bolsonaro against the triumph of the Frente de Todos

This is not the first time that the PSL leader has expressed, through Twitter posts, his displeasure with the results of the PASO elections in Argentina.

In a post on August 14th, Bolsonaro associated the victory of the Frente de Todos with the country’s economic downturn: “Fernández-Kirchner (for Alberto Fernández and Cristina Kirchner) got 47 percent of the votes in Argentina’s primaries this Sunday. As a result, the peso devalued from 45 to 59, a thirty percent loss. The country risk rose from 860 to 1800 points and shares lost fifty percent of their worth.”

In a second post, the former military officer wrote: “Prices are beginning to draw closer to the prices of a country more and more similar to Venezuela.”

In addition, Bolsonaro had termed Fernández and Kirchner as “left-wing bandits”, warning that Brazil would leave Mercosur if the Frente de Todos win, and he predicted that Macri’s defeat could bring about a migration crisis in Argentina. “We don’t want Argentines fleeing here,” said the president a day after the PASO results.

Alberto Fernández, faced with this compilation of criticism of his character and his party, responded forcefully: “I am glad that Bolsonaro speaks badly of me. He is a misogynist, a racist and violent. With Bolsonaro I have no problem having problems.”