An echo in Brasilia
1 min read . Updated: 09 Jan 2023, 11:00 PM IST
PremiumOn Sunday, thousands of supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s seat of governance, enraged over his defeat in recent national elections, which they allege were rigged
Several world leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have condemned the actions of a mob in Brazil’s capital Brasilia. On Sunday, thousands of supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s seat of governance, enraged over his defeat in recent national elections, which they allege were rigged. The lack of concrete evidence for that charge mattered little to rioters and vandals who acted in ways that echoed what happened at the US Capitol complex on 6 January 2021, when crowds gathered in support of Donald Trump’s refusal to concede a clearly lost election and sought to thwart a peaceful shift in power. Bolsonaro’s political approach resembled Trump’s, and his followers presumably took some of their cues from America. As the world’s most heavily watched democracy, willy-nilly, the US has outsized influence over events in other parts of the world. It is incumbent upon the US, then, to uphold every single aspect of democracy as it ought to be rather than set a shocking poor example, as it did a little over two years ago. Similar logic operates for climate action: for everyone’s sake, the US commitment must get bipartisan.
