By Beto Vasques, Director of Institutional Relations at DX

“Popcorn and ice cream sellers”: the former president’s message in English seemed prosaic but is the result of a well-constructed narrative to discredit possible convictions for coup d’état and other crimes in the STF trial. 

The now famous phrase said in English by Jair Bolsonaro last Sunday, April 6, about “popcorn and ice cream vendors” being tried for a coup d’état in Brazil did not just become an internet meme. It highlighted yet another chapter in the former president’s strategy of reconfiguring the attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, of which he is accused, through a narrative of victimization. This is an increasingly articulate movement that abandons the terrain of objective criminal dispute and adopts a discourse of denial, shifting the focus: from accused defendant to political persecution.

Basically, Bolsonaro is repeating the formula he used in the elections, when he questioned the electronic voting system and the impartiality of the TSE ministers so that the population would not accept the election results and rise up to invade the Praça dos Três Poderes and precipitate a GLO (Guarantee of Law and Order), a state of siege or defense. This time, he is questioning the evidence in the trial (the coup minutes, the testimony of the army and air force commanders, the coup minutes, the Dagger Green and Yellow Plan, as well as his public statements on September 7, 2021 and 2022 and at the meeting with the ambassadors), just as he questioned the ballot box; he is questioning the impartiality of the Supreme Court ministers, just as he questioned that of the TSE ministers during the elections; and he is encouraging his party members and voters not to accept the result of his trial, as he did with the election results, opening the door once again for them to rise up against this new “injustice.”

At the event held last Sunday in São Paulo, the former president once again stated that there was no attempted coup. He claimed that he was, in fact, the target of a plot, a coordinated action against his candidacy and his political freedom. According to Bolsonaro, the Supreme Court acted with bias, treating him differently than his opponent, Lula da Silva.

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