 Well, hello everybody. Good afternoon wherever you're watching from. My name is Alastair Roth. I'm the executive director of ADI in Victoria and welcome to our webinar. Thank you for your interest. We've got something over 150 people dialing in to watch us. So we really appreciate your interest. With a populist president who's been courting controversy really from the beginning and of course who now since yesterday has the challenge of testing positive to COVID despite downplaying the risks for such a long time. Brazil really is facing some challenges. So to discuss today whether Bolsonaro really is the Trump of the tropics we're joined from Sydney by Dr. Debra Farias. Deb is senior lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of New South Wales. Before coming to Australia she worked as a trade analyst and policy analyst in Canada and Brazil and her research interest is developing and rising powers particularly Brazil. So Deb it's great to have you with us. Thank you also to our friends at ADI New South Wales for the introduction. I'll hand over to you and take it away. Thank you. Thank you so much Alastair and thank you so much everybody for watching whatever it is that you are there in the world. So I will begin here just by a little bit of using here PowerPoint. I won't kill you to death. It will not be death by PowerPoint. It's just to give a little bit of a visual as I go and talk about. So the idea is to talk about Bolsonaro as you know is he Trump of the tropics and before I start I stumbled upon this image that I mean for someone be hesitated even maybe to be using this one which is like sort of a mash-up between the face of the two. But I think if I really want to summarize the debate about Bolsonaro and Trump are alike is that if you like Bolsonaro you'll like Trump and vice versa. So this is the kind of thing for instance I picked this up from you know just googling and it's the sort of thing that you can see the really hardcore Bolsonaro supporters will put two of them as very close. However if you do not like Bolsonaro you're probably not or do not like Trump or probably won't like Bolsonaro and then this is the sort of image that you will see. So just hopefully to start off by showing how polarized this is. So one of the first things that one can see when you talk about Bolsonaro and Trump is they are by their by their politics by the way that they see the world that they've been leading their countries. They are figures that are very polarizing and most people either really like them or really hate them. Hence the images there. So what I'll try to do here is just to put myself here in the bottom is just to go a little bit. So these are 10 elements because of course this is something that I could go on for a long time. I won't but there's a lot of stuff to be said. So what I'll try to do is just to summarize along these sort of 10 topics sort of putting them together. The first thing here when I mentioned change is because these are two men that were elected in basically in a platform of change and change in the sense of course everyone who's going for election they're going to say that they're different from whoever was in place but both of them represent a deeper sort of proposal for change in terms of the status quo. Now because most people already know Trump obviously I'm going to talk a little bit more about Bolsonaro and what happened in Brazil was there has been a sense of growing polarization in the country's politics and I mean even for a Latin American standards even for Brazilian standards this is a very very high level of polarization that's been really increasing pretty much since 2013. I don't know if you remember but basically in 2013 when was when you begin to see some of the all these like really really big public manifestations in Brazil against not just president then Dilma Rousseff but against sort of the status quo in general so a lot of complaints about corruption a lot of concern about where the country was had this sort of led to one of the first main ruptures which was Dilma Rousseff's impeachment in 2016 and by then already the country was already quite polarized as it remains in many ways until now. So it's not that Bolsonaro piggybacked on Trump's call for the status quo because it's important also to say that one of the big differences from Bolsonaro to Trump is that Bolsonaro has been in politics for about 30 years so in that sense you can even make a comparison probably closer to Duterte and the Philippines that has this very long history I mean compared to Trump that had no history in being in politics so it is a change because he's been in politics but he was never in a leadership position he was never in any sort of executive role as a governor mayor let alone president and because of a lot of controversies surrounding the workers party it's a very long story that would be then another webinar but essentially Bolsonaro won and has been Brazil's president since January of last year so he has about a year and a half. The problem is that change by saying you don't want to be like the previous person necessarily mean a specific platform for action and that's where a lot of problems have been going. I can obviously discuss that more in Q&A but essentially the point is to make that they both come to the political scene I think in this sense that it's about again a rupture with the system. Now what they really have in common and I think these are probably the main elements in terms of substance in terms of content of style has to do with this right-leaning populist approach to politics which and again it's easy to say well populist is an easy it's a word that's sort of easily thrown around as when you don't like someone you say that they're a populist the point's not that the point about populism because you can be in both the left or the right but it's this idea that you have basically one of the cornerstones of a government is to have this idea of a world divided between us and them and the people is obviously us it's construed as this sort of again these are three elements so nationalism appeal to religion appeal to not just the path but a specific view of the past and it tends to be a rosier version that it's it's proposed as we should go back to when you know the the good old days except obviously there's an element of cherry picking as to what those good old days looks like you kind of put aside the things that didn't work but both of them have in a really strong sense of this sort of division in the case of brazil you'll you'll find one of the very odd divisions is that in many ways we're living almost in the cold war because one of the things that you get if you criticize Bolsonaro is to say that you're a communist which that has been used for Francis who Kuyama has been called a communist Marine Le Pen has been called a communist the economist has been called a communist publication so it just gets not necessarily by the president but by the supporters who see the sort of very strong division between us and that by the way a new poll numbers came out and it's apparently around steady around 30 percent the general population now that gives Bolsonaro sort of a good or very good this was a lot higher a year and a half ago but now it's at 30 percent and for some statistics the really really core the the almost cult like following is at about 15 percent of adults so again probably a lot of resonation there with Trump where it comes to a point where it's not even about the politics itself but there is an element of the great leader regardless where they go there is a lot of appeal to nationalism although in brazil it does get different contours we don't have as many of a controversy with refugees or foreign immigrants as it is in the united states so it's there and it's this vision really of brazil and it's been interesting also to see how in brazil there is all the controversy now about wearing the yellow jersey for the brazilian you know soccer team which by the way unfortunately i think i have to remember today was the day what a couple years ago where we lost seven to one so it's it's a it's a sad day in our memory and appeal to religion is is also another element that's very interesting that links um Bolsonaro and Trump and Bolsonaro is quite strong with that and that's also showing in terms of foreign policy because you do see for instance um brazil getting closer to the u.s which is a traditional partner but also to the poland and Hungary and with this idea of so it's not just religion but it's about um christianity and a generally quite conservative view of christianity so it's very specific in that in that sort of sense um and then you have obviously their appeal to the past which in brazil what is probably most problematic is the discussion that has to do with the dictatorship brazil had a long dictatorship between 1964 and 1984 and well most brazilians don't want dictatorship back but there is a portion of people who are hardcore Bolsonaro to have it back um again i can talk about more about that in q and a in terms of the the role of the military in the current government because they do have positions they have political excuse me political positions in place right now another element that's also interesting when you juxtapose these two is really this idea of family and politics uh Bolsonaro has um three adult sons he also has again similar to trump three adult sons from the first marriage one um other child from the second marriage and then a young kid from the third marriage so they're very uh you know it's it's again if for those who don't like them they'll point out the inconsistencies of this very apparently very strong approach to religion but also being divorced and having sort of this troublesome you know uh private life but what matters here is that and and this is something that is a bit different than from from Bolsonaro to trump is that when you see the the the trump kids it's really one it's really um Ivanka that seems to have sort of this bigger role in terms of policy her in the case of Bolsonaro it's different because his three adult sons who he calls by zero one zero two and zero three um they they were all elected two political positions even prior to Bolsonaro being president so it's it's also it's it's different than Ivanka because she was never elected now these three whether one likes them or not they had been elected all of them basically around Rio the state of Rio the city of Rio where sort of the the clan sort of sits um and so you have here in the picture you have a senator you have a federal congressman and you have a local city councilman but all of them play really important roles in um in his decision-making process one of his kids especially the one um the one let me see I don't know if you can see but this one sort of right here on the corner um he Bolsonaro himself said that his son is really his pit bull when it comes to social media and so a lot of the success that Bolsonaro has had through social media has to do with this participation strong participation from his children now he did try to have this son here um placed as brazil's ambassador to the united states but that didn't fly and this one here is involved in a lot a lot of um how can I put this uh he is involved well he's being investigated for illegal use of money and criminal like well things that were even before Bolsonaro were president a lot of there are sort of scandals going on one thing is for sure if you follow brazilian politics you'll never get bored there is always something new going on but it's just to say that there is sort of the hard hard core of the Bolsonaro presidency is undoubtedly it's it's him and his sons so his sons have actually tweeted out a couple of ministers already so there's they really speak um they really have their voice their father whether that's good or bad now one of the sons here Eduardo Bolsonaro was the one that came out with he visited the united states many times and um this was him wearing as you can see a trump 2020 cap a bit earlier in the year and he's the one that they tried he he did try to push for a couple of months for him to go and be brazil's ambassador to the united states which is the the the biggest embassy i mean in washington but it really it didn't work um now one of the reasons also that i flag out this same Eduardo Bolsonaro is that you probably know who that's here that's Steve Bannon and um this is a tweet from last year where hero read it in english where Eduardo Bolsonaro was saying satisfaction and being the head of the movement for latin america Steve Bannon's group so if you don't know what the movement is it's basically this idea that Steve Bannon after he left the trump um presidency he went to europe and it's this idea of sort of building this sort of think tank organization to um bring together and join forces with uh conservative right groups in europe in general long story short it hasn't really succeeded it hasn't really done a lot it has the only thing that's really made it a big is acting um well helping to elect salvini in italy but other than that it hasn't really done much but still i think it's quite interesting when you see not just then the two presidents or how you know the states are sort of connected but to see underlying links so um so Eduardo Bolsonaro has been really strong with Steve Bannon um there has been so from his group and he sort of forms um the head of sort of one of the there you can say there are a couple of internal groups fighting inside of the the Bolsonaro presidency to see not presidency but power to see who has more power and he sort of leads one that's the most ideological more religious space so you have people from Breitbart um it's it's this sort of alt right sort of line um the other ones that don't have to do with this but the other one is the military group so the vice president is um a retired general and then you have the others that i think you can put um more into people who are more focused on economic liberalism so you have these different groups again that is i think an interesting difference from looking at trump because with trump you really see the republican party um although you do have some dissenters like mit romany and you have others that have been you know more vocal against trump but essentially the united states has a two-party system and then you have basically the republicans really supporting trump and the debates that you'll have inside the impression that one gets is that they're a lot more about individuals in the case of the Bolsonaro presidency no you will have these sort of different perceptions of which group really should have power and how the state should be conducted and they they don't play together very nice i mean you see a lot of infighting there in the system now another thing that they have and it is something that's quite common to populists in general again whether left or right i mean it's the the use of social media but it's not just i mean everybody uses social media but it's a very specific use of social media it's one where it's presented as a way of direct communication so it's this idea where for example Bolsonaro every thursdays in brazil he does a facebook live session and the way that he puts it is that it's his idea that he can communicate freely to the people without any sort of media interference misinterpretation or anything so people who like him they will say well this is good because it's unbiased they'll like it because they'll say i feel that you know i have this connection i'm seeing that person i can tweet i can send something and they'll go back um the one thing is that Bolsonaro is is not an avid tweeter as is trump although i think not everybody could um maybe even compare to him in terms of world leaders and this this unfiltered use once again if you like that style it's a handful um but Bolsonaro one of the reasons that probably you can also attach even to his election was through the use of these let's say alternative channels of communication but these are also two leaders who are involved in a series of controversies so they'll have a lot of issues with media they'll have a lot of issues with um it's i mean a pseudo-psychologization would be it's they're not used to being questioned uh i think this also reflects the fact that none of them had had an executive position before because even Bolsonaro having had a legislative position the brazilian congress has over 500 um legislators so it's it's really hard to sort of you know be a big deal and be on the television and be the person but once you are in any executive position you are the go-to person especially in the presidential system and in many ways it's you one would expect that the media would be asking questions i mean that's sort of the the role is to be really questioning and to be um i think to to be where else here you end up being like north korea right just sort of with a propaganda style but they both have a style where they're very vocal and they both have a style where they tend to and they tend to have um say things that again i mean i'm not i don't have the the time to list all of the things but anybody in brazil would be seeing like can you believe the last thing that you know they said um in the case of brazil if i already want to talk about climate change and environment i'll do here just um an example and last year when the the fires in the amazon were raging once again so to be to be fair to to Bolsonaro there's there's a pattern of usually in the second half of the year because it's a drier season is when you have um you have flock fire and and clearings in the amazon now that is normal up until a certain point it's normal in terms of um nature kind of like here in australia where there's a period of the year where that is sort of it's easier to happen and easier to spread and harder to control um but one of the differences is that in brazil generally almost all the fires are man-made and they have an economic um objective now the government comes in in that aspect because it's up to the government i mean the brazilian amazon takes up about two territories if you took the brazilian amazon and juxtaposed it to australia that would be close to about 70 percent of the australian territory would be the amazon so it's an area that just physically it's very hard to be um to to have an on the ground control and that's why you need the role of the federal government to coordinate with the state government and the municipal government and all sorts of um levels to really have um the ability to assess what's going on the ability then after assessing to be sending people to the ground to stop what's going on before it sort of spreads to be able to punish people um that are doing the wrong things and that's where with Bolsonaro it gets um a bit more complicated because you do have a a different perception um and that resonates more with something that the military would have not everybody in the military but many in the military in the 1960s to the 1980s that really the main role of the amazon or one of the big roles is to bring economic development to brazil the issue that i come to the controversy is because last year um Bolsonaro really went hard on NGOs sort of claiming that foreign NGOs were the ones responsible for starting burning uh both men unsurprisingly are really upset with um with agreda tharnberg um the teenage um activist environmental activist um but but it sort of got i mean quite under over no out of control last year when i mean president Bolsonaro even suggested that people like Leonardo DiCaprio the actor were sort of involved finance and green peace and green peace was the one doing all the destruction so there's an element of um i mean some people have put it as paranoia others will say no he's just saying it like it is and it's it's brazil's area and nobody from outside should be meddling into brazil's own domestic affairs um that international actors are acting with a lot of hypocrisy because they also do many wrong things so who are they to be judging brazil but um it is it is coming now to sort of that phase again and because of this concern what's going on in brazil is actually something quite interesting where you actually have a lot of agricultural exporting companies they are the ones who are trying to domestically push the government to be doing more control over the amazon because they know that they're the ones who are generally the first to be affected by all sorts of boycotts and there was just a letter that came out i think two ago with these i don't know how many billions of dollars these companies together have but essentially an upper letter saying to the brazilian government that look if if actual you know concrete action isn't done to preserve the amazon um that they would start boycotting or they would not be selling things to brazil they would be limiting so a series of things so you have an interesting scenario now and there's been talks especially for the past i think 10 days of um the minister of environment to be the one falling because he's the one where um a lot of people are he doesn't have a lot of supporters i would say and i think i'd go here i'm looking at the clock just to be i'm sure on time is to go to one of the first things that we were um that alaser was talking about is that yesterday president bousonado did get um he had a confirmation i've also kind of said but it's not it's not coven it's just a normal flu um that yes that he is uh he's positive for um for coven that in itself has caused i mean this is almost unbelievable some people even don't think he has coven um which already is interesting in itself i mean to say well you have the president saying people say no he actually doesn't have it because he might just be using uh you know possible positive uh result to be covering for all of the things that are going on this week politically in brazil including his son being um having to testify for you know the things that he's used of and a whole bunch of different elements but both men unfortunately have not been doing well in terms of administering the the the coronavirus situation so in brazil of course these are very big countries brazil's the fifth largest country in the world we have over 200 million people there's a lot of problems in terms of infrastructure in terms of health so in one way you can expect the numbers to be higher just because the the the number of people right 200 million people um the numbers now as far they are very unreported but the official numbers have the million people confirmed um and almost 70 000 people dead from covid and the number keeps climbing almost the number of daily people that have been confirmed um to have died from covid it has been over a thousand for days if not a couple of weeks and unfortunately it doesn't yet seem that we are at a situation of normalcy of going into a plateau of course certain areas of the country because the country is huge certain areas have been um less bad if i may than others but it's a very difficult situation and the middle of this we are i think 55 or 56 days without a health minister because of political issues there was one that was actually a quite popular um health minister he was he was someone that regardless of where people stood ideologically he had something like over 70 80 percent of you know approval people saying that they were liking the the job that he was doing but he did go head to head with um Bolsonaro regarding hydroxychloroquine um he didn't want to make it as you know the prescribed thing or have everybody taking this medication for covid and i mean some people say also it had to do with political jealousy because he was getting more attention but in any case that one left and then there was another minister for about a month and now we've been without a minister in the middle of you know the the pandemic um it's a bit interesting to see similar to the u.s reality how you've had uh federalism brazil's a federation as the u.s as canada as australia but it it resonates more the style of how this was approached more to the u.s than to australia where in australia the feeling is that you actually had really um there's there was this very strong role of the federal government and the state government and they seem i mean as someone living here for two years the perception that i had is that generally it was a cooperative situation in brazil this is not really the case uh you're having basically most governors we're gonna have 27 states so most governors sort of really imposing the more um harsher rules in terms of lockdown and containment and the federal government the executive in the federal government is the one who's really saying no we have to be looking at jobs and we have to be opening everything up um and i mean unfortunately Bolsonaro could have done a lot more i think um i'm yet to find maybe a brazilian who says no he he did everything that he could he said some things that i think should not be said by a country when brazil had 10 000 um we registered 10 000 dead uh someone asked him about that and he basically his answer was quite literally so what idai and sort of this idea that quite nihilistic i think almost like well everybody dies uh oh you know people are gonna die for different reasons and basically if you're really sick is that you're gonna die and i mean it's uh it's um it it it's a difficult moment because i feel very comfortable being here in austria there i feel very very fortunate um notwithstanding what's going on in melbourne what has happened here i don't want to minimize that but once you look at brazil and our her family is there in mind my husband um and you look and it's just it's it's it's quite you know it it gets to you to see how much better we could be doing because brazil does have the potential to do a lot better um i'll just go here with them final things and then with again it's not necessarily i think i have to say but what you have is just i think anybody who really embraces sort of a populist uh you know playbook and saying here in san n is bound to be unsuccessful dealing with a virus because a virus does not care about your tweets a virus does not care about how strong you appear to be um there's there's really there's no judgment when it comes to the virus in that sense and i mean even bosonato apparently it just came out in the media i looked at it this morning saying that in a meeting not very long ago um somebody was coming in with the meeting wearing masks and he made the comment that you know kind of jokingly and saying oh that's so gay like homosexuals you know it's like it's not a manly thing to be wearing masks and again there is this element of of trump i think with um a very particular view of what it is to be a man or a leader um and unfortunately it is not really doing that well when it comes to covet and i'll just finish off here it's kind of a mm you know well kind of sad for the two of them but it's the image that i wanted to show with this is just to show how the two of them are each one dealing with their own particular problems domestically so there is no doubt that trump i mean from you know the u.s election is coming his numbers don't appear to be good in any way um brazil is expected also to have municipal level elections now in october although it's probably going to be postponed at least for a bit things are not going well um bosonato's popularity he's not growing any followers so his base is strong but it's one where instead of increasing and instead of gaining it has basically been um shrinking and i think it's one thing to be elected saying i am change i am not the past i'm different but being different is not a policy in itself right you need to show you need to have results um and i think there's this element of an increasing frustration of course covet is neither of these men fault it's no one's fault but how you deal with it they do bear a strong responsibility for um trust building for confidence building for really the sense of leadership so um it will be very interesting to see uh i think as a political scientist i'm not going to say i'm happy but i'm curious to see how these things will play out in the case of of again if you don't like trump it's looking like um he's not going to have a second turn and if that is the case bosonato would really have to sort of rearrange his foreign policy because right now a lot a lot of um let's say the bets are sort of put you know stacked up in this special relationship with the the united states but if um trump is gone i don't see any reason why um a biden will want to have you know this very very special in different relationship with brazil so on that note i will hopefully right on time proud of myself at exactly 35 minutes perfect i did it thank you that that was really excellent very wide ranging we've we've got lots of questions coming in we'll get through as many as we can some are some are covid related some are political but i think uh to lead probably seamlessly on from covid um what's the process of replacement if a brazilian president is unable to continue in office um so the official thing would be you have the the the vice president and the vice president and that's where things begin to be quite interesting so i've you know people in brazil who really follow politics say that um what's the name uh house of cards was it the the the show it's like oh that's that's for children that's for beginners thank you but the idea is that you would probably have the vice president um who's a general mogul he would probably take over now bosonaru had had has had his series of health issues um he was you know stabbed although some people even question if he was stabbed but let's assume he was stabbed indeed um he did go into hospital and everything and the especially him and his kids made a point that he would still be signing off so as of now um it doesn't look like he's going to relinquish power because there's a reason that especially the military will be more loyal to the military and not necessarily to the president and given what we've had with dillma and her vice president michelle tamar and other stories in latin america there is this concern that once the vice president sort of has this flavor really for power that they might actually want to stay and again the problem with bosonaru is that his base is falling so it's not like it's something where you would have millions and millions of people on the street crying because of them um so it would it would be sort of a uh a tricky situation although it does not appear that he is in a really bad shape but you don't know with covid right you can be well and then afterwards unwell but so far that doesn't seem to be the case is there a is there a an anti bosonaru press uh well how how does the press relate to him um if you have a supporter all press is anti bosonaru press i guess you can put it like that so again kind of like trump with oh the mainstream media they only want to talk about bad things so there's people saying why is the media focusing only on the deaths we should be focusing on the people who have recovered and i mean that's one way of seeing it but i do think that regardless if it's left or right if you like the government or not it is the role of journalist to be really asking the the you don't want to be throwing softballs hey how was your day it's like no what are you doing this why aren't you doing that um but it's it's been challenging so for example there are a couple of newspapers the equivalent of the new york times of washington post that the government now the federal government canceled uh the the subscription to so in order to sort of make a a stance and then sometimes is giving um press releases like the one when he said he was covered he only invited four um journalists and all of them were really like pro-government so basically if you are very pro bosonaru you're gonna say everything in the media is against bosonaru they won't let him work they're just out to get them however i would think for most people it's no they're reporting they're they're doing their their job and they're reporting and it's up to people to sort of siphon through but it is a process again once you have um this ample availability of sources a lot of people do migrate to sources who kind of um you know preach to the choir and that end up being more of echo chambers that say oh these are the good things and they will question they won't do anything just knowing the comparison between bolsonar and trump points we made trump has a very strong geographical basis to his support in the states are there any particular regions of brazil that show particularly strong support or opposition to bolsonaru yeah no that's a that's a good question so in terms of election you do see in general especially the northeast of brazil um bolsonaru didn't do as well like that was probably the region where he really didn't do as well he's still like his numbers are always um on a on a lower scale and he did do better from sort of real downwards so more on the southern half of brazil but what's happening now but i don't think it's as clear cut because in brazil you really see that sort of core but it's not only about trump it has also to do with the republican party and where a lot of um let's say more evangelical groups are that tends to overlap all of these elements into the southern part of the united states now in brazil it's different because you have for instance if you look at evangelical voters they're all around um the country if you look in terms of um of race there might be an element there but still there's a lot of very there there weren't certainly the lower you go in brazil the more south you go in brazil the the wider it tends to be but race isn't the only element um or at least it isn't as strong as it is in the united states so it's there but not so much um yeah in brazil i think it's that's what also makes it complicated because you'll see people in you know different um economic brackets the the support might be the same the support might jump so there's no one exact sort of group the only thing i would say really is that sort of the northeast of brazil where where i'm from is where you have really it's a much stronger hold of the the workers party so lula indelma and it's where bolsonado never did really well and he's not he hasn't improved since he was elected you'd mentioned the um evangelical voters and the couple of questions about the role of the church and what are the any connections between the rise of populism in brazil and growing power of evangelical churches at the expense of the catholic church yeah yeah and uh again that's a really good question and it's also poses um some things that are different when you look at um generally latin america and especially christian catholic um catholicism so generally you've had in a lot of countries in latin america a catholic church that is quite progressive so in the case of brazil for example it was the catholic church who did a lot of the political pushing for um people with aids and hiv in the early 90s it was the church who really pushed that that sort of um um flag that sort of battle so you have in general um it's it's almost like i mean in brazil if you look into i think up until the 60s or 70s over 90 of brazilians were catholic but the number has been going down nowadays the number is probably around two-thirds of brazilian christians are catholics and evangelicals are growing more and more and in a lot of the the catholics i think you'll find a lot of people who are more let's say culturally catholic so you're catholic and you you know you you do the rituals you celebrate certain things but you're not necessarily um as invested in that identity in a way that really is the motivator for you to vote so it's one of the elements of the identity but you will see more frequently so for example you will have a lot of evangelical um leaders pastors have been elected to the legislative you won't see um priests being elected to legislators so there's these different divides and in brazil the the the evangelical group that probably has the biggest power is the one who unfortunately tends to be more predatory it tends to be by predatory i mean it's a group that is more related to the sort of um church of i think they call prosperity the the gospel of prosperity that it's really you know you give money and then that seed is gonna you know make god give you something else afterwards and so it's it's it's predatory in the sense because it's not so much about a church that is about helping someone else but it's really about um yeah i mean i don't i don't want to flatten and the discussion and say every evangelical in brazil is like that because it's not but it's just that that seems to be um almost if you think in the us the equivalent of the tele evangelists you know the really big arenas and you really see a whole lot of money they have private jets they have a whole bunch of things so they they are really they've sort of so Bolsonaro is not exactly of that group but he really attached himself and they have attached themselves to Bolsonaro to really raise um and really gain a lot of power and that was very good thank you in terms of um government and governance does does Bolsonaro have to work with with a congress that he controls and and and could he also just or later just talk a bit more about the role of the military and and how how he's running yeah no those are also uh uh good questions and well that is very different the brazilian system from the american system because in the us basically you have two main powers and then if one power has you know the the the majority somebody's got a majority minority and it sort of sets the pace well in brazil's congress right now there is i think there's only maybe one or two parties that are in the double digits everybody i think the biggest one might be the workers party and they might have something like 16 percent 17 percent of everybody there there's over 30 parties in congress and almost all of them are like nine percent eight percent four percent three percent so it it makes it different i mean and that i will say whether it's Bolsonaro Dilma Blula Cardozo whoever is in power it is a tricky process because you really have to sort of weave this coalition and they're they're tiny so it's not like you can just grow and you know make a coalition with let's say two big groups and you're set usually that's going to involve a lot of these small parties and on the one hand you can say hey that's great because that makes a democratic right you can say that's great because it means that you have to listen to many voices and you have to be more democratic the downside is that these parties a lot of them know that they will only the government gives them a good deal so it's i will be by your side but i want the ministry of transportation i want my person to be the director of the national agency for aviation whatever you have so you end up having a system that is bound to be problematic for anybody who's in power so that whether you know you like Bolsonaro or Dilma you know whomever that is a challenge that all of them um have to face but we are living now in a pretty weird situation where um the i think the president of the senate and the president of the the you know house of representatives i don't think they've ever had this much real political capital i mean legally they still have the same powers they did before but because there's the government has no experience really one of the downsides of being new is that it means you've never done this before so it ends up being there's a again a downside of being new is that you are an amateur and because of this lack of ability of really know how the system works which again can be really bad because you say ha i know how it works i give money to this one i give a you know you kind of everything is stacked but it also means it's dysfunctional because you do have to talk to the other powers and that's why you have for instance um we've had a probos on out manifestations with people with bad the supreme court which is absolutely appalling but it's because the supreme court is saying no you can't do this you can't do this you can't do this or you know no this is what the law is saying this is what the law is saying and then again with populism it's easy to say i'm trying to do everything it is them the supreme court they are the bad guys they are the ones who are not allowing me to work so it's it's the you pass the buck right the responsibility so if nothing gets done it's the congress's fault it's the media's fault it's um it's everybody's fault but the leader itself that that actually brings us quite needy on to the next question which was just could you talk a little bit more about um Bolsonaro's interactions with the judiciary yes so that again that is a very tricky one because for instance Bolsonaro Dilma Lula all of them had their issues obviously very different issues with the judiciary but the tendency for most people who are in party who are in empowers to say um when the judiciary is going after me it's politically biased sometimes are right sometimes it is true and sometimes it is the case that yes it is politically biased but again most uh people in politics and politicians in power their default position is to say everything is political this is not a legal judgment it is political so in in you will see again Bolsonaro supporters saying that the the the investigations going after um his son his sons going after um his allies there's a lot of investigation around the use of fake news and sort of this this excuse me this um really sort of hateful use of social media um this is not about fake news it's about attacking the president it's not about what um you know flappy Bolsonaro or Carlos Bolsonaro have done it's really about Jair Bolsonaro and everybody's going after sort of the president so I think it's sort of a common narrative I don't find it surprising and it is challenging I will say always if you are if you have the supreme court analyzing things related to the president they will always be political just because you can't really detach but that doesn't mean that it's done in bad faith right that doesn't mean that you're necessarily going over the law it doesn't mean that you're manipulating the law sometimes it just happens that the person did wrong things um but yes it's uh one of Bolsonaro's sons the one I showed with um with uh Ben and he was one that he said once it's like oh yeah we only need like a jeep and two soldiers to close the supreme court like quite flippantly um and obviously most people in Brazil are like I don't think that's a good idea I think you know it just yeah it doesn't make sense and then finally just to go with the in terms of the the armed forces the military the challenge is that you have a situation where the only personnel who are very vocal and most of them pro Bolsonaro tend to be the ones that are retired the people that are inactive by the position that they have they don't do interviews to the press they're not tweeting about how they love or how they hate you know the president because they're inactive and that is what brings a lot of people like I'm in a group where a lot of people do investigate this relationship and it's hard to sort of filter out you know how much support does he really really have and that I think is kind of a black box um I hope we don't have to open it let's you know let the military stay where they are they have their role but I don't think it is their role to be in power in this way it's it's a very very dangerous um you know position to be in where you can say oh I am above um you know the narrative I am above the political parties I am above ideologies I only care about the nation and you can use that as a narrative it's a strong narrative very dangerous and very easy to slip into something extremely problematic just to follow up a little bit more on the on the role of the military is that Bolsonaro bringing them in for support or are they are they imposing themselves on him so to speak that's well I would like to know if the you know how much of the second part is true I think he is inviting a lot um up until his election because now I mean with his election you sort of really shifted the role of the military in the in the zeitgeist of Brazil because obviously after the end of a dictatorship in 84 they were really really set to to the side and actually Bolsonaro like a lot of the things that he ended up being elected in the state of Rio and then going to brazilia was because like as a legislator was looking into military issues like um you know support for widows or pensioners this this sort of you know increased salary so it was really it was a sectoral defense that was his sector that is what he worked with and he does bring people to this stage that are people who will agree with him some of them are people who are his contemporaries from when he was in um in power but also because again pre 2019 the military actually were able to build a very good reputation as an institution in brazil a very trustworthy institution they were not meddling in any sort of politics since you know the end of the the the military dictatorship so they were seen as you know i'm not going to say good guys because that's pushing it but they were seen as you know a serious institution that's not really meddling in in the political life now the problem is that it appears that there's a lot of discussion inside of people in the military you know people active duty and people outside of active duty between how much should we attach ourselves are we there's an expression it's like are we hugging the drowning man you know is this what we want to do because the problem is the moment you really really begin to attach the Bolsonaro and Bolsonaro falls the military is going to fall in terms of reputation as well so i think that this discussion this year it's where it's going into um a direction that maybe last year we cut kind of flag that it would happen but i think this year it's like i think you actually have discussions on how much should the military really be involved and if it doesn't want to be involved what do we do do do they all leave or do they stay and stay and demand certain things um but the fact that Bolsonaro did put someone as his vice president put him's in a really difficult position because he can't fire him and literally the number two the person who might want your job is someone who you cannot fire so it is again interesting times to be studying Brazilian politics could you briefly just comment on the current security situation crime and violence um well that was also one of the big things that Bolsonaro was elected on and i mean a lot of cities in Brazil have been struggling with with crime a lot of it related to organized crime with uh there's a lot of levels we have problems again different areas in brazil will have different problems where i'm from city called portaleza there's i mean the numbers there are horrible in terms of violent homicides and it has a lot to do with uh drug trafficking but it it's the problem of not having enough funds enough money for um for the police there are problems in the judiciary that are very slow um there is similar to the united states abuse of power by the police so that also makes the police not really trustworthy for people to be you know i can't even call the police because i don't even trust they might be just as bad as you know the bad guys and you know who what am i going to do so Bolsonaro really also got elected on this platform of again law and order and saying i will restore order and once i'm ruling and everybody will kind of you know shake in their places and things will will be right again will be good again but i think reality has proven a lot more complex and it's not by i mean he also wants him and his sons like they really want everybody to be full of weapons and guns um and i mean at the one hand you can say oh that's great because you know if someone comes after me on my family i'm just going to shoot them down but that's not real life and um i don't know i mean i'm i'm i'm an i'm an optimist so i'm hopeful that solutions will be found but i don't think that the ones that the government are using are the ones who will get us there where we've got time for well a couple more maybe a few when we might go slightly over time perhaps i'm fine not just but um just again with the the a contrast with the us or comparison you talked about the federal system and states and municipalities trump has to deal with um state governors and that that's a bit of a handbrake sometimes on what he he can do or yeah parallel in brazil with that system yes and um but it's in many ways it's sort of new and unique because brazil has a system of federalism that is extremely centralized so if you think australia canada united states have now lived i i joke around and say i'm moving along large federations because those are four countries that i've lived maybe i'm missing out you know russia um what happens is is that brazil was first a unitary state and then it became a federation so our structure wasn't that the states had all this independence and ceded some of their power to the federation it's actually the opposite is that you had a unitary system and once it broke down into the federation it was about giving these sort of minor things to the states so historically states in brazil they they've never really been this sort of big competition or big political force in in sort of this federated like a coordinated federated different the federal executive and the state level executives because they've never had really that much power they could talk about you know the sort of like uh tariffs that go between state and federal governments you know royalties from oil that is discovered in a state and their federal what this case is different is that the supreme court did rule that um states and municipalities but especially focusing on states they could have they could do things um they could take initiatives in terms of public health that were not dependent on the federal government so that was one of really the big key things because it allowed the state governments and what you have is basically most governors saying look i'm looking at this from the lens of experts i'm the one who's actually looking at my hospitals being filled up and you know having to deal with all these problems and so what you have is essentially an i'm not going to say new phenomenon but a pretty unusual phenomenon is to have the majority of these governors coming together and really working as a political entity which is something that we haven't really seen so it is different from the u.s because in the u.s it's almost expected you know that this is how the system is and for instance in brazil the civil law is the same in all states criminal law is the same in all states we don't have this sort of variation um so it is interesting to see governors really coming together as a political force against a position from the the president and the the governors regardless of sort of their affiliation you had governors from from different it wasn't just leftist governments it was most really the majority of governors um coming together and saying look i'm seeing this from the ground and you know covet is not a little flu covet is going to kill a lot of people and so that's why you sort of see this different tension i think bolsonat is really the one who holds a lot more of ideology in his decision-making process and it's not to say that there is an ideology in governors but i think it's a lot more toned down um than it is with with the the leader of the federal executive um we're probably probably getting the part of a last question we it's a great sign of a great talk if you got lots and you can't get through them but just to a little hypothetical sure possibly unfair but um what's what's the potential for a healthy working relationship between bolsonar administration and the potential biden administration after january if if that was to happen well god knows okay so um at at at its face doesn't look good given um the a lot of the way and i mean again it has to do with sort of this populist approach is that the relationship is in between the countries it's between the leaders you know if it wasn't for me this deal wouldn't have happened um again populist left and right they they they tend to do this it's very very personalized um now it would put brazil in a in a difficult situation however i do think that if we have a different minister of foreign affairs because the one that we have now is one of the most hardcore in this really ideological um sort of approach he's someone who from every report that i read it's someone that he's not um taken seriously or at least let's say he's not someone who is admired inside the institution and he doesn't really have a lot of friends i think all around he has a very very specific view of how brazilian foreign policy should be conducted and it is a glaring disparity from everything that the institution has had in the past it's a very the the brazilian diplomatic um core is almost like a military core and having you know this history the spritical this sort of very clear identity of what they are what they do how you do it this is a major major rupture but all the media at least you know all of the gossip that you see is that from the past like 10 days um is that he might be one to fall and i think if you have a more you know a more normal in the sense of someone who would really fit all the typical criteria to be in the ministry of foreign affairs and there are i mean the number of diplomats is just phenomenal the quality there there's no lack of of you know people that have the capacity to really do um good for brazil but it's up to the president the president is the one who actually has has to choose now the question is you know how much is the president willing to because he's in a pendulum he has a lot of the support from this ideological core but not everybody else the moment that he tries to break from this bubble and gain more support from other groups that are not ideological he can be painted as um you know turning his back on the real ends and turning back on the people who voted for him so it's very hard i think for him to have it both ways because the moment he gains and you know sort of gets into a system that is less ideological the people who are with him will probably be the first ones on the street to be saying you you're a traitor to the real values so i i don't know i don't know how that's going to be able like how he's going to be able to square off um these very different groups because again if the economy is going well people can tolerate a lot of things if you have job if you know you're you're if things are going okay people are a lot more willing to tolerate you know bad behavior um but it's when the tide is down i think it's uh warren buffett that said it's when the tide is down that you see who's been swimming naked right so it's now that you know when things are not well and the the i mean covid has been bad for everybody and i think it's really revealing the cracks it's really revealing things that are like okay this can no longer be seen as politics as usual because we're not living in the world as usual so i don't know and i will say one thing anybody who's very certain about brazilian politics doesn't know what's going on because it's full of surprises it's full of things and i mean you get the picture the one thing that's constant is that there's always something happening because of the time difference when i wake up here it's at the end of the day in brazil so i'm suddenly flooded by everything that's happened during the day and and it's uh again it doesn't cease to amaze me but again i am an optimist and i do think that the fact that we still have um a very critical media that we still have um you know despite its problems institutions that are still doing their job or the basic contours of their job i think it's it's a good sign it's um maybe in the big big picture it can be seen as growing pains again i am i am an optimist my my husband sometimes looks at me and he's like what are you saying woman he doesn't really he's not but i don't know i think i think we have to i'm a believer that you know the the arch what's that the long arch of justice sort of bends you know forward and things can get less bad they might not be perfect but they can get less bad well i i think that's a very good point to draw proceedings to a close on we have run slightly over time but i think it was definitely worth spending the time um deb thank you very much we've had great feedback and coming in just very such detail and wide ranging and interesting discussion so really fantastic have you on thank you very much thank you so much everyone at home or wherever you are watching um everyone please stay well or from from lockdown in melbourne to yes well and hopefully we'll we'll be reconvening in person before too long but really excellent deb thank you very much for coming on great to see you thank you good night thank you