Coup threats rattle Brazil as deaths surge

[Judi Lynn]

Bolsonaro and his allies are using prospect of military intervention to protect his grip on power

By Simon Romero, Letícia Casado and Manuela Andreoni in New York
Published 11.06.20, 4:31 AMUpdated 11.06.20, 4:31 AM

The threats are swirling around the President: Deaths from the virus in Brazil each day are now the highest in the world. Investors are fleeing the country. The President, his sons and his allies are under investigation. His election could even be overturned.

The crisis has grown so intense that some of the most powerful military figures in Brazil are warning of instability — sending shudders that they could take over and dismantle Latin America’s largest democracy.

But far from denouncing the idea, President Jair Bolsonaro’s inner circle seems to be clamouring for the military to step into the fray. In fact, one of the president’s sons, a congressman who has praised the country’s former military dictatorship, said a similar institutional break was inevitable.

“It’s no longer an opinion about if, but when this will happen,” the president’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, recently told a prominent Brazilian blogger, warning of what he called a looming “rupture” in Brazil’s democratic system.

More:
https://www.telegraphindia.com/world/coronavirus-outbreak-coup-threats-rattle-brazil-as-deaths-surge/cid/1780043

New York Times News Service