Plots in Brazil

Brazil’s far-right candidate for president Jair Bolsonaro was stabbed in the abdomen during a parade in the city Juiz de Fora Thursday. Bolsonaro’s son, Flavio tweeted that his father had been stabbed and suffered severe blood loss and arrived to the hospital “almost dead” but added that “his condition now seems stabilized. Please pray.”

Numerous videos on social media showed Bolsonaro, who has promised to crack down on crime in Latin America’s largest nation, being stabbed with a knife to the lower part of his stomach. At the moment of the attack, Bolsonaro was on the shoulders of a supporter, looking out at the crowd and giving a thumbs up with his left hand. According to Folha, Bolsonaro’s liver – which was perforated by the stabbing – suffered a “grave injury.”

After the attack, he is seen flinching and then goes out of view. Other videos show supporters carrying him to a car and hitting a man who was apparently the attacker. Brazilian media reported the “Brazilian Donald Trump” was undergoing urgent surgery at a local hospital.

Bolonsaro, who was caught by supporters as he fell, was quickly whisked away in an SUV, further video indicated. His son later said on Twitter that the wound was superficial and his father was doing fine.

A police spokesman confirmed that the alleged attacker – named as Adelio Bispo de Oliveira – was in custody after being badly beaten up by Bolsonaro supporters. The man was arrested in 2013 for another assault, police said.

Luis Boudens, president of the National Federation of Federal Police, told the AP that the assailant appeared to be deranged.

“Our agents there said the attacker was ‘on a mission from God,’” Boudens said. “Their impression is that they were not dealing with a mentally stable person. He didn’t expect to be arrested so quickly, agents reacted in seconds.”

“The Minas Gerais police reacted rapidly. Uniformed officers who were there arrested the attacker,” said Major Flavio Santiago, a police spokesman.

Santiago said such attacks were rare in Brazil. “The candidates in this political process of getting close to their public, they have their security, police are there,” he said. “In Brazil we don’t have the culture of this type of attack, where someone can break through security and attack a candidate.”

The incident comes after a tumultuous period in Brazilian history that saw a president impeached 2 years ago and the still popular former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva jailed and barred from running in the election. It is the most unpredictable election since Brazil’s return to democracy in 1985 with a highly splintered field of candidates.

Brazil’s President Michel Temer commented on the attack during an event in the nation’s capital, Brasilia, saying “the intolerance that there’s been in Brazilian society is unacceptable.” Other presidential candidates were quick to condemn the attack.

Bolsonaro’s political rivals were also quick to denounce the attack.

Fernando Haddad, who is likely to replace Lula as the Workers party presidential candidate, said the stabbing was a “shame” and a “horror”.

“The violence against the candidate Jair Bolsonaro is inadmissible and is a double attack: against his physical integrity and against democracy,” said Marina Silva, an environmentalist and centrist candidate.

But Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s successor, provoked some anger when she suggested that Bolsonaro’s extremist views could have provoked the attack.

“When you plant hate, you harvest thunderstorms,” she said in an interview with the Folha de S Paulo newspaper. During the Congress session that began Rousseff’s 2016 impeachment proceedings, Bolsonaro dedicated his vote in favour of her suspension to a notorious dictatorship-era torturer. Rousseff was a member of the armed resistance to military rule and was herself tortured.

Bolsonaro recently said that members of her Workers’ party should be shot.

A former army captain, Bolsonaro – similar to Trump – had made a name for himself with his unapologetic rejection of political correctness and willingness to court controversy. Statements about women, minorities and LGBT people have repelled some Brazilians, but attracted many others.

According to the latest Ibope poll, Bolsonaro had 22% of first-round vote intentions, more than 10% points ahead of his closest rivals. Former Environment Minister Marina Silva and left-wing candidate Ciro Gomes each have 12 percent while former governor of Sao Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin, has 9%. Fernando Haddad, the likely substitute for Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has 6%, although it remains unclear how much of Lula’s vote, which was in the 30% range, would transfer over to Haddad now that Lula has been barred from running for president.

Following news of the stabbling, Brazil’s Ibovespa index extended on its gains in the afternoon, as traders assumed the candidate would be the recipient of a “sympathy vote.

“People will start to see Bolsonaro as a victim,” said Luiz Roberto Monteiro, an analyst with Renascenca brokerage

Thiago de Aragao, from political consultancy Arko added that “some might interpret that if the ‘left’ did this, the chance of them losing increases considerably.” However, he added that it’s too soon to point to correlation between stabbing and markets, and that if that proves true it shows “how the market is completely lost in their interpretation of the campaign.”

Bolsonaro, once feared by investors because of comments against privatizations and private investments, has become the most viable option against the left. The incident “increases Bolsonaro’s election chances,” said Richard Back, head of Latin America political strategy at XP Investimentos, at a time the candidate was losing votes.

Brazil’s Bolsonaro Lost 40% Of Blood After Knife Attack By Crazed ‘Socialist’

09/07/2018

We previously detailed the shocking stabbing incident involving Brazil’s far-right candidate for president Jair Bolsonaro – called “Brazil’s Donald Trump” due to his at time eccentric behavior and policy suggestions – during a parade in the city Juiz de Fora Thursday. Bolsonaro’s had suffered severe blood loss and arrived to the hospital “almost dead” according to his family, but his situation has stabilized as he remains in intensive care.

Significantly, only one month ahead of a presidential election in Brazil, the man commonly described in local media as “Brazil’s Donald Trump” and who was a presidential front-runner and current congressman will take at least two months to recover from the serious wounds, according to medical staff treating the presidential candidate.

Hospital director Eunice Dantas told reporters on Friday that Bolsonaro had lost about 40 percent of his blood, or more than two liters, resulting in his being in shock upon arrival after the knife penetrated 12cm (4.7in) into his abdomen. Doctors now report him to be “in excellent clinical condition” after emergency surgery.

Citing medical sources, Reuters reports of Bolsonaro’s medical status after he suffered the deep wound to his lower stomach:

Congressman Bolsonaro, who has enraged many Brazilians for years with controversial comments but has a devout following among conservative voters, could take two months to fully recover and will spend at least a week in hospital, said Dr. Luiz Henrique Borsato, who operated on the candidate.

“His internal wounds were grave and put the patient’s life at risk,” Borsato said. The challenge now is preventing infection that could result from the perforation of Bolsonaro’s intestines, he said.

He’s since tweeted that he’s doing well and recuperating; however, in a video message ot his supporters Bolsonario acknowledged he had been in “intolerable” pain and had “never hurt anyone”.

Numerous videos on social media showed Bolsonaro, who has promised to crack down on crime in Latin America’s largest nation, being stabbed with a knife to the lower part of his stomach. At the moment of the attack, Bolsonaro was on the shoulders of a supporter, looking out at the crowd and giving a thumbs up with his left hand. According to Folha, Bolsonaro’s liver – which was perforated by the stabbing – suffered a “grave injury.”

Police have arrested 40-year-old Adelio Obispo de Oliveira, and say they are currently investigating his mental health. He reportedly told police he was “on a mission from God” and has been described as a socialist.

Immediately after the attack he was beaten by angry supporters of the 63-year old presidential candidate before being taken into custody.

Video footage of the attack has since gone viral, and Brazilian media reports the political process ahead of the upcoming presidential election is in tatters and remains uncertain.

The suspected attacker, Oliveira, was reportedly a member of the left-leaning PSOL party from 2007 to 2014. And multiple reports further note that just prior to the attack he posted messages criticizing Bolsonaro and praised the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.

According to local media reports, Pedro Augusto Lima Possa, the suspect’s lawyer said his client has confessed to the knife attack.

Possa said, “Adelio confessed and claimed responsibility for the attack. But he said he had not intended to kill [Bolsonaro].”

“He said he acted due to political and religious reasons, against Bolsonaro’s prejudices,” Possa added in separate statements to Bloomberg. “He acted without anyone else’s participation nor on anyone’s order.”

And consistent with media reports presenting the attacker as mentally disturbed, a local news interview revealed the following, per Bloomberg:

In the video posted on local news websites, de Oliveira says no one but “God above” ordered him to carry out the attack.

In recent years, the attacker had begun talking to himself, responding out loud to television political news, and presenting disturbing ideas to relatives, his niece Jussara Ramos told BuzzFeed. Possa declined to comment about his client’s mental health.

The incident comes after a tumultuous period in Brazilian history that saw a president impeached 2 years ago and the still popular former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva jailed and barred from running in the election. It is the most unpredictable election since Brazil’s return to democracy in 1985 with a highly splintered field of candidates.

According to the latest Ibope poll, Bolsonaro had 22% of first-round vote intentions, more than 10% points ahead of his closest rivals. Former Environment Minister Marina Silva and left-wing candidate Ciro Gomes each have 12 percent while former governor of Sao Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin, has 9%. Fernando Haddad, the likely substitute for Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has 6%, although it remains unclear how much of Lula’s vote, which was in the 30% range, would transfer over to Haddad now that Lula has been barred from running for president.

Bolsonaro has relied heavily on social media and rallies across the country in a grass roots populist oriented campaign,thus his inability to take to the streets and give speeches could greatly impact the results.

President Temer, an unpopular leader, is not standing for re-election, and millions of voters remain undecided.

Mr Bolsonaro is expected to have a strong first round but lose a run-off to leftist Ciro Gomes, environmentalist Marina Silva or ex-Governor of Sao Paulo Geraldo Alckmin, according to leading research company Ibope. — BBC 

However, Flavio Bolsonaro, the candidate’s son, made a surprise statement on Friday, saying “the attack was a political boost”.

Indeed with Bolsonaro’s story of surviving this vicious attack now spread across the globe, and with an outpouring of sympathy from Brazilians, many of which are still on the fence regarding the upcoming election in October, this could be the very thing that pushes him over the edge to victory.