This Good Friday bank holiday, President Jair Bolsonaro participated in a motorcycle rally, occupying much of a São Paulo highway. Gathered there, many of his supporters hailed him as the new Messiah. He used his electoral campaign tone to attack WhatsApp and TSEs (Superior Electoral Court) agreement with new electoral threats.
Bolsonaro attacked the agreement between both parties, so that the new app tool that allows groups with thousands of people can only start working after the second round of elections in Brazil. I think the idea is to reduce all the Fake News and misinformation going around social media rigging like WhatsApp that could leave the electorate confused over which presidential candidate to vote for in the October elections.
In Bolsonaro’s words, he moaned, “And is this what WhatsApp is committed to all over the world. I think not. Now, they are creating an exceptional clause for users in Brazil. This is both irrelevant and unacceptable”, said Bolsonaro in the middle of Friday’s Americana countryside motorbike gathering this 15th April, 2022. Then he went on, “This agreement that they may have actually made with Brazil, and the information that I have up until this moment will not make it possible.”
In other words, Bolsonaro believes he will be able to block the agreement between WhatsApp and the Superior Electoral Court. He continued, “Censorship, discrimination, that doesn't exist. No one takes away your right, not even by law, let alone by an agreement. This agreement has no validity,” while repeating that everyone must “play within the four lines” of the Constitution. “Brazil will remain free whatever the cost.”
Bolsonaro, however, did not say how he could prevent this agreement, since it is a compromise between a private company and an arm of the magistrates of court (Judiciary Power). The legal path for the president would be to use the Department of Legal Affairs (Ministry of Law and Justice), the AGU (Advocacy-General of the Union) in Brazil, to appeal to the TSE itself.
What do you think?
Take care!
Prof. Carl Boniface
Vocabulary builder:
Hailed (v) = saluted, acclaimed, greeted, welcomed, affirmed, (ant) ignored, rejected
Messiah (n) = champion, liberator, leader, defender, savior, guardian angel
Rigging (v) = to rig something is to arrange, assemble, fit. In the context of the article, it means fixing i.e., spoon feeding voters into making biased decisions and supporting candidates by carrying out potentially foul play.
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