Update: An indication of turmoil the Bolsonaro regime is experiencing is the resignation of all three military chiefs of staff after he fired his Defense Minister. The resignations are unprecedented since the end of military government thirty-six years ago. Brazil has been hit hard by the pandemic with over 300,000 reported deaths. Bolsonaro is under increasing criticism for his handling of the public health emergency. Observers see the resignations as an attempt to increase his control of the government and his political support as he faces an increasingly serious challenge from former president Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva.
{28.03.21}It what could be a major break for conservationists and the future of the Amazon rainforest, the Brazil Supreme Court cleared Luiz da Silva, former President, of his corruption conviction. Lula will undoubtably run for office in 2022 against the nationalist Jair Bolsonaro, who has made rainforest exploitation a major policy of his administration. The progressive Lula presents a serious challenge to Bolsonaro. He leads in major opinion polls.
Lula received a 600 day prison sentence at one point in his lengthy prosecution, but the Supreme Court found that the prosecution was unfair and intended to end in his conviction. Prosecutors wiretapped his phones and coordinated each step of his trial with the trial judge, Sérgio Moro. Moro later accepted an appointment as Minister of Justice in the Bolsonaro government. Moro also has connections to the US State Department, and paid a visit to the CIA during his 2019 US trip as Justice Minister.
Lula may have benefited from an opinion shift in the country's power elite. Recently they have been critical of the Bolsonaro government's response to COVID-19. Bolosonaro made world headlines comparing the virus pandemic to the flu and refusing to wear a mask in public. The ensuing acceleration of the virus spread in Brazil has had tragic consequences.
The oligarchy's pact to remove Lula's leftist government as part of its desire to dismantle social programs was aided by the pandemic, which has devastated Brazil's health care infrastructure. Lula faces the greatest challenge of his lifetime--restoring Brazilian environmental protection, now that he is free. A recent study published in Biological Conservation indicates Environment Minister Ricard Salles began in ernest to deregulate environmental protections while the country was focused on battling the pandemic . Since Bolsonaro took office at the start of 2019, fifty-seven pieces of environmental regulation were set aside or weakened. Twenty-eight of these actions occurred during the first seven months of the pandemic. There was also a 70% drop in fines imposed for regulatory violations between March and August, 2020. Bolsonaro had made his intentions clear even before he became president. During the 2018 election campaign, he declared he would do away with the “industry of environmental fines” and combat the “eco-Shiites.”