President’s proposal to change to paper ballots falls shorter of bulk necessary for constitutional adjust.
Associates of Brazil’s lessen residence of Congress have voted down a prepare by significantly-correct President Jair Bolsonaro to alter the country’s voting procedure in spite of an uncommon display screen of armed service hardware by the armed forces.
Politicians of all stripes called the parade of tanks, armoured staff carriers and amphibious motor vehicles a sort of intimidation hrs prior to legislators voted on Tuesday on a constitutional modification backed by Bolsonaro.
Brazil’s decreased home of Congress voted down the proposal with 229 votes in favour, 218 from and 1 abstention, with dozens of legislators absent. The vote fell 79 votes shorter of the 3-fifths vast majority necessary to approve a constitutional amendment.
The Navy reported the parade experienced been planned very long just before the vote in the lessen home of Congress was scheduled and it was meant to invite the president to an once-a-year navy workout on Sunday.
The presidential media office environment did not answer to a request for comment on the parade.
With his popularity flagging amid the world’s next-deadliest COVID-19 outbreak, Bolsonaro has insisted in recent weeks on introducing paper ballots for the 2022 election, centered on unproven claims of fraud in Brazil’s electronic voting process.
He has threatened not to settle for the effects of subsequent year’s presidential election, which polls display him getting rid of to former remaining-wing president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Neither male has formally announced his candidacy.
Flashback to dictatorship
Flanked by the commanders of the armed forces, Bolsonaro stood outside the house the Planalto presidential palace as the armed forces parade passed by. A Navy officer in combat gear walked up the ramp to hand him the invitation.
The sight of tanks by the presidential palace unsettled Brazilians who lived less than the 1964 to 1985 military services dictatorship.
Legislator Arthur Lira, the speaker of the reduced chamber of Congress, named the army parade forward of a very important vote a “tragic coincidence”, and he did not take an invitation to go to the armed forces’ exercise.
Other politicians mentioned the strange military services existence in front of the presidential palace was intended to intimidate them.
“Tanks in the road, precisely on the day of the vote on the paper ballot amendment, is genuine, distinct and unconstitutional intimidation,” Senator Simone Tebet of the centrist Brazilian Democratic Motion occasion explained on social media.
“Bolsonaro has turned a military education exercising into a political spectacle,” mentioned left-wing Congresswoman Perpetua Almeida, contacting it a demonstrate of power in response to his dropping poll quantities.
“This shot will backfire,” she wrote on social media.
Political scientist Mauricio Santoro of Rio de Janeiro State University advised the AFP information agency that Bolsonaro was using the tank parade “to test to intimidate Congress and the Supreme Court”.
“He desires to show the armed forces are on his facet.”
Troopers arrested a team of protesters who attempted to block the convoy.
A modest crowd of Bolsonaro supporters also attended, some carrying symptoms calling for the military to intervene to “save Brazil”.