High court orders pro-Bolsonaro roadblocks cleared

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP):

Brazil’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the federal highway police to immediately clear hundreds of roads across the country blocked by truck drivers protesting President Jair Bolsonaro’s loss in the October 30 election.

A majority of the court’s justices backed the decision, which accuses the highway police of “omission and inertia”. Failure to comply will mean its director can be fined up to 100,000 reais (more than US$19,000) per hour, be removed from his duties and even face arrest. Federal prosecutors in Sao Paulo and Goias states said they had opened investigations into the blockades.

By noon on Tuesday, highway police said they had removed 306 blockades, but more than 260 were still in place.

Bolsonaro hasn’t spoken publicly since official electoral results were released Sunday night, nor has he phoned da Silva to concede.

“There is no doubt that, even though he might not be directly responsible for these actions, everything he has done as president stoked this, especially questioning the electoral process and the ballots,” said Williams Gonçalves, a political science professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Much like former U.S. President Donald Trump, whom Bolsonaro openly admires, the far-right incumbent has repeatedly questioned the reliability of the country’s electoral system, claiming electronic voting machines are prone to fraud. He never provided any proof, even when ordered to do so by the electoral court.

“Bolsonaro is completely isolated. Everyone responsible for other institutions has already recognised the election’s results,” Gonçalves said.

Bolsonaro lost the race by a thin margin, garnering 49.1 per cent of the vote to da Silva’s 50.9 per cent. It was the tightest presidential race since Brazil’s return to democracy in 1985.

In Sao Paulo – Brazil’s most populous state and largest economy – traffic jams around the international airport led to dozens of flight cancellations, with videos on social media showing travellers rolling their suitcases along the highway in the dark trying to catch their flights. The highways had been cleared by Tuesday morning, but airport officials said access remained difficult as traffic was still backed up in and out of the airport.

There, Dalmir Almeida, a 38-year-old protester, told AP that after completing three days of strikes, he and others will drive their trucks to the military barracks to ask for their support. “The army will be in our favour,” he added.

At another road block in Sao Paulo state, protesters set tires on fire. Several demonstrators were wrapped in the Brazilian flag, which has been co-opted by the nation’s conservative movement for demonstrations. Huge lines of cars could be seen snaking along the highway.

Fears of escalation grew as the country’s leftist Landless Workers’ Movement, a key ally of da Silva’s that has long staged occupations of what it considers vacant or unused lands, asked its militants on Tuesday to organise demonstrations in several states to unblock roads.

Sao Paulo Governor Rodrigo Garcia told a news conference that the time for negotiations was over, and he was not ruling out the use of force by law enforcement.

“From now on, we are going to apply what the (Supreme Court) decision determined, starting with fines of 100,000 reais per hour for each vehicle that is contributing to this obstruction,” he said.

The Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday permits regular state police forces to reinforce federal highway police, and the governors of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo states ordered them to deploy, news outlets reported. The same was done in 2018, when an 11-day trucker strike brought Brazil to a halt.

Bolsonaro commands wide support from the police forces’ rank and file, however, and it wasn’t clear how effective their involvement would be. Da Silva’s Workers’ Party had accused Bolsonaro’s campaign of deploying law enforcement to create traffic jams and deter people from voting on Election Day, and video footage shared on social media showed officials stopping buses.