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Brazilians hail strength of democracy as Bolsonaro is called to account

‘In Brazil coup-mongers go to jail. In the US they get back into the White House,’ says one leading politician

Brazilian democrats have celebrated the strength of their country’s judiciary and institutions after the former president Jair Bolsonaro was left facing political oblivion and jail time for allegedly plotting a coup, in stark contrast to the US’s failure to bring Donald Trump to justice for his anti-democratic acts. Freixo was far from alone in voicing those sentiments as Brazilians absorbed the shocking details in the attorney general’s 272-page indictment, which laid bare just how close one of the world’s largest democracies came to suffering a violent military rupture after Bolsonaro lost its last presidential election to his leftwing rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022. Desperate to cling to power, Bolsonaro allegedly presided over an intricate two-year authoritarian conspiracy, which involved using social media to spread disinformation about Brazil’s supreme court and election voting system, sowing chaos on the country’s streets, and using that turmoil as a justification for a military intervention.

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