RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil celebrates the 200th anniversary of its independence on Wednesday, with the festivities clouded by a divisive election race and accusations that President Jair Bolsonaro is using the festivities to bolster his campaign.

Trailing in the polls to leftist ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ahead of October’s elections, Bolsonaro is planning a massive show of strength to mark the occasion, including military parades in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro and rallies by his supporters in cities across the country.

Last year on Brazil’s national day, the far-right president triggered an outcry with a fiery speech saying “only God” could remove him from office and vowing to stop heeding rulings by Supreme Court Justice and top electoral official Alexandre de Moraes, whom Bolsonaro considers an enemy.

That year, Bolsonaro supporters broke through a security cordon in Brasilia on the eve of the festivities and threatened to invade the Supreme Court.

The race for the October 2 election has left Brazil deeply divided as it marks the anniversary of the date in 1822 that Dom Pedro I, then the sprawling South American colony’s regent, declared its independence from Portugal.

Bolsonaro is trailing Lula in the polls heading into the first-round election, which will be followed by a runoff on October 30 if no candidate wins more than half the valid votes.

But the incumbent looks determined to flex his muscle on Independence Day.

“September 7 will be politicised by definition this year, coming in the home stretch of the campaign,” said political scientist Paulo Baia of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). “It will be tense and potentially violent,” he said.

Bolsonaro will start the day presiding over an official military parade on Brasilia’s Esplanade of Ministries. Tens of thousands of spectators are expected, with a heavy security presence.

A pro-Bolsonaro rally is planned just after — with critics accusing the president of blurring the line between his official duties and his campaign.

The incumbent will then fly to Rio de Janeiro, where his supporters are planning a motorcycle rally to the city’s iconic Copacabana beach. There, the military plans to put on another spectacle, with a cortage of navy ships tracing the coast, an air show and a paratroop display.

A group of pastors from Brazil’s powerful Evangelical Christian community has rented a stage in Copacabana where the commander in chief could address the crowd.

Donations have also poured in from another largely pro-Bolsonaro group, Brazil’s giant agribusiness sector, to help fund Independence Day events across the country.

The Bolsonaro camp has been highly active on social networks, urging supporters to turn out en masse for the day.

Bolsonaro’s congressman son Eduardo raised eyebrows on Twitter by calling on Brazilians “who have legally purchased guns” — a contingent his father has sought to expand with aggressive gun-control rollbacks — to enlist as “volunteers for Bolsonaro.” Such comments have added to fears of violence around the election if Bolsonaro, who regularly attacks Brazil’s voting system as fraud-ridden — without evidence — follows in the footsteps of his political role model, former US president Donald Trump, and refuses to accept the result.

Lula, Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2010, apparently plans to keep a low profile Wednesday, but has rallies scheduled for Thursday and a meeting with Evangelicals, a key voting bloc, on Friday.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2022