That was the way it was in the Brazil of Odorico Paraguaçu and it continues to be that way in the Brazil of Jair Bolsonaro.
In the fictional city of Sucupira, the mayor created by the novelist Dias Gomes said he was willing to open even a water spout to be reelected. In Bolsonaro’s Brazil, in the absence of even water spouts to open, the government decided to rain tractors to collect votes.
Folha reveals that, taking advantage of the lights out of 2021 and on the pretext of the covid emergency, the federal government planned to distribute, preferably to allies, almost R$90 million in machinery supposedly intended for family farming, but which includes wheel loaders and graders.
These latter facilities lend themselves, among other things, to opening and paving roads, initiatives that, because they have the power to immediately improve the life of a community, have a high electoral quotient — that is, they are very much appreciated by mayors wishing to win the sympathy of the electorate.
Sucupira’s booklet, observed until today by most national politicians, says that the allied mayors have the fundamental task of, on voting day, transporting voters to the polls, providing them with snacks, promises and a souvenir of their name. and number recorded on pieces of paper, the immortal “glue”.
It is not by chance that deputies and senators from the ruling base — and some from the opposition — had already used the so-called secret amendments to please friendly mayors by directing thousands of tractors purchased by the Ministry of Regional Development to their municipalities, according to a report by Estadão in May of the year. past.
Now, the same procedure seems to have seduced the Executive that, instead of secret amendments, planned to use the Union Budget to make tractors get where they matter – or, as the report indicates, to the places where, with a helping hand from the benefited politicians, machines can turn votes for the president.
In four years of government, Bolsonaro has sowed suspicion where there was once trust, as in the case of vaccines; he downgraded institutions that managed to rise above the landscape through hard work, such as the Federal Police; he strove to spread obscurantism, with a predilection for the areas of culture and education; and resurrected from the catacombs from which the expression “coup d’etat” was never imagined.
Jair Bolsonaro sold “conservatism” and delivered civilizational throwback. The use of the “tractor policy” shows that, hand in hand with Centristão, the ex-captain is willing to prove that Millôr Fernandes was right: Brazil really has a great past ahead of it.
