Led by beleaguered ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s political right rallied Saturday amid a free speech tussle that has seen X, its preferred social platform, suspended in the country.
Bolsonaro called the demonstration for Latin America’s biggest city, Sao Paulo, on Independence Day — which was being celebrated in the capital Brasilia with a parade overseen by leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
In a video, Bolsonaro urged protesters to turn out en masse in green and yellow — the colors of the Brazilian flag but also coopted by his supporters.
“There is no point celebrating our independence if we are deprived of freedom,” the former president said in the post on Instagram.
At the rally scheduled for 2:00 pm (1700 GMT) Bolsonaro will be hoping to show his political clout a month before municipal elections in the deeply divided country.
He left office nearly two years ago after a razor-thin election defeat to archrival Lula.
That prompted so-called Bolsonaristas to storm the presidential palace, Congress and Supreme Court on January 8, 2023, calling for the military to oust Lula and claiming, without evidence, that the election was stolen.
Bolsonaro, dubbed the “Tropical Trump,” is under investigation for an alleged coup attempt over those events.
‘Toga-clad dictator’
Bolsonaro and the far right are at war with Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who presided over the TSE electoral tribunal when it banned the ex-president from running for office until 2030 over his attempts to discredit Brazil’s electoral system.
Moraes, who has taken on the mantle of an anti-disinformation crusader, is leading several other investigations into Bolsonaro, and it was he who ordered the suspension in Brazil of X for breaching local laws.
The right hates Moraes and accuses him of censorship and abuse of office.
Bolsonaro has described his ruling against X as a “blow to our freedom and legal security, which will drive away foreign investors and have adverse consequences in all spheres of public life in Brazil.”
Lula, for his part, has come out in support of the fight against “fake news.”
Saturday’s demonstration was called before Moraes blocked the platform formerly known as Twitter.
One of the rally’s organizers, evangelical pastor Silas Malafaia, urged followers to come out in numbers to demand “the removal of the toga-clad dictator Alexandre de Moraes.”
Members of the right-wing opposition in Brazil’s Senate have said they will file for Moraes’s impeachment next week — a move welcomed by X owner Elon Musk.
Bolsonaro has traveled the country widely in recent months to boost allies who will be seeking office in October local elections.
On Saturday, “We will see the true extent of Bolsonarism,” Geraldo Monteiro, a political scientist with the University of Rio de Janeiro, told AFP, in reference to the turnout.
In his social media appeal, Bolsonaro asked supporters to “not take part in the independence ceremonies organized by the government.”
In February, a pro-Bolsonaro rally also in Sao Paulo gathered an estimated 185,000 people, according to researchers at the University of Sao Paulo.
Another in Rio in April gathered fewer.
In Brasilia, Lula — with Moraes seated near him on the official podium — presided over a parade featuring 30 military athletes who competed in the Paris Olympic Games.
Before taking his seat, Lula waved as he rode through town in the presidential Rolls-Royce.
