♪ >> welcome, you are watching al jazeera. it's just gone half past yellow, your top stories, the u.s. president, joe biden has announced a list of incentives and restrictions to try to get more americans vaccinated against covid-19. federal employees who are not inoculated will need to wear masks and have regular tests. >> work to get more people vaccinated. and i hope all americans who live in areas with substantial or high case of rights will follow the mask guidance being laid down by the cdc. i certainly will and have,

because this is one of those areas in washington. at my direction, all federal personnel and visitors to federal buildings will have to do the same thing. >> the syrian government forces are intensifying the bombardment of the area. 18 people have been killed and thousands displaced. rebels launched attacks on checkpoints. the worst violence since the government retook the area three years ago. tunisia's president has appointed a new interior minister days after freezing parliament. the latest appointment followed the dismissal of a long list of senior officials. opponents have labeled his actions as a coup. he's dismissed as accusations. -- those accusations. the u.s. congress increased the number of visas for afghan allies who faced taliban retaliation. the first group of afghans are on their way to the u.s. but

many are still awaiting to be approved. the un security council has hurt appeals to intervene, as myanmar's health system collapses. the u.k. ambassador is warning half the population of 54 million people could be infected with covid-19 in the next two weeks. japan's government proposed extending the coronavirus state of emergency. new measures will apply to three prefectures near the olympic city of tokyo and the western prefecture of osaka. the capital announced a record number of daily infections on thursday. the news continues after "inside story." more news, and 30 minutes. -- in 30 minutes. ♪ rob: brazil's president reshuffles his cabinet, hoping to shore up his popularity.

but there's growing public discontent. jair bolsonaro stands accused of mishandling the covid-19 pandemic. and angry protestors think he should step down. so, who is likely to win this battle? this is "inside story." ♪ hello, and welcome to the program. i'm rob matheson. brazil's president is under pressure again. during the course of this year, jair bolsonaro managed to unite left-wing parties, trade unions, and social organizations, because they are trying to get him impeached. he is mainly accused of mishandling the pandemic and possibly being responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. brazilians have also accused him of corruption, a disregard for the environment and policies, they say, are fueling the

economic crisis. in his latest reponse, bolsonaro announced a government reshuffle, but that's only angered more people, who say that the president is a threat to democracy. >> i am here against this government that i consider genocidal, responsible for not purchasing vaccines, and too many people died for a lack of vaccines that the government did not buy. >> i am here claiming the right of all brazilians, the right to democracy without fascism and bolsonaro out. nobody can stand this genocide in the country anymore. >> i am for the amazon, for the indians, and for the truth, and that's why i'm here, because bolsonaro is a liar, i didn't vote for him, but i also didn't think he would be so genocidal. rob: we are going to go to our guests in a moment, but first, let's take a look at bolsonaro's presidency. the populist and conservative president took office in 2019, after defeating leftists, who have ruled for decades. his victory was seen as part of growing support for the far-right in many countries. he's been criticized for

favoring torture and praising the nation's former dictatorship. his comments on race, gender, and sexual orientation have also provoked controversy. the president has labeled coronavirus a little flu, pushing for quarantine measures to be lifted, and sent contradictory messages about masks and social distancing. and he's been sued by indigenous leaders of the international criminal court for damage caused by his environmental policies. ♪ let's bring in our guests. joining us from sao paulo, we have jeraldo zahran, he's an author and brazilian political analyst. in new haven, we have nizar messari, he is an associate professor of international studies at al akhawayn university. also from sao paulo, we have claudio couto, who is a political scientist and also associate professor at the jetulio vargas foundation. welcome to you all, gentlemen.

nizar messari, i want to start with you. what do you think the president is trying to achieve with this reshuffle? >> well, one of his main objectives is to establish himself to keep being president until the next elections. so there are attempts of impeaching him, as you said in your introduction note, and by driving this reshuffle, and then by bringing a key ally to his government. he wants to confirm his alliance with the central to avoid any attempt of impeaching him. so this is, from my point of view, his main objective. an alternative objective is to allow him to counter the narrative that is being driven

by the covid inquiry commision at the senate. one of the very indirect consequences of this reshuffle is that his son will be sitting as a potential participant in the commision, and this will allow him to defend himself and his narrative, in fighting the covid pandemic in brazil. so these are his two main objectives. there are others. but for the time being, it's a strategy of survival, aiming at the long-run, and that is winning the elections. rob: jeraldo zahran, we hear a lot of course about the people in brazil, who are opposed to the president. let's talk about the support that he has. what is the state of bolsonaro's support in brazil at the moment, do you think?

>> i think he reached a floor. he is standing on the support of the high liners, the extreme right supporters, that probably make up about 15%-20% of the electorate, depending on how you measure it. these people are people that benefit, they are policemen, the firemen, the people in the military. some ruralist people benefit from his policies. some christian evangelicals that align with his conservative ideas. and for this core group of supporters, they are with bolsonaro until the end. it doesn't matter much what he does or what he says, if he contradicts himself, or even the impact, the result of his policies, these people have just been following him since the

beginning, and it seems they will stick with him until the end. rob: claudio couto, in the changes in opinion about the president that we have seen in brazil over the last 12 months, say, how much of that is done to people who opposed him in the first place? and how much of it is people who had voted for him, do you think, who are now seeing a different side or choosing to interpret what he's doing differently? >> i think that when we consider the polls that show the popularity or the loss of popularity of bolsonaro, we can see that about half of his former voters in 2018 now do not support him. this is what the numbers show to us. and it has to do of course with his behavior, as a president, and he has a very peculiar kind of behavior. he is a very aggressive president, he doesn't respect the tradition of the behavior that other presidents have, and -- had, in terms of how to talk

with people, how to talk with representatives of other branches of the government. and it has to do of course again with the policies. and mainly, in this case, the policies regarding health and the policies regarding how bolsonaro dealt with the pandemic, not only in terms of sabotaging the measures that were necessary to keep people apart from each other, in terms of health security measures, but also in terms of the vaccines, or prescribing medicines that really do not work, that even have prejudicial consequences for the people. we could consider this whole thing, we can say that people now think worse of bolsonaro than they did before. he still relies his support on a very hard core base comprised by far-right people, extremist

people from the security forces, and these are now something like 20% of the brazilian population. since he had more than 50% of the votes, we can say he lost the support of at least 30% of resilience. -- 30% of brazilians. rob: for those who don't follow brazilian politics closely, what were things like in brazil, when the election took place and jair bolsonaro was put in place? >> well, i think that bolsonaro, he was elected because he presented himself at that time as a kind of outsider. it's very difficult to say that bolsonaro is a real outsider. bolsonaro is much more a marginal insider than an outsider, since he was a federal representative for 28 years, all his sons are members of the political class, one of them is at central, one of them is a federal deputy, another one is a city counselor. and so, bolsonaro was a member of the system. he was able to present himself

as an outsider, and since there was no widespread feeling about the politics in brazil, in terms of reacting against the traditional political parties, against the traditional politics, the representative institutions that don't work properly, according to the perception of the brazilian people, bolsonaro presents himself as one who will destroy everything to rebuild it in a different manner. and now, we have this reshuffle in his government. we can see he is not doing that. rob: let's talk about this reshuffle. given the fact that he appears to be able to -- actually, i'm going to come to jeraldo zahran, because you wanted to make a point there. >> yet, if i may jump into the last question, looking forward, in our last election in 2018, we were also coming out of years of

the consequences of the carwash operation that dealt with corruption in the political system, marginalized the workers body, some of the politicians were arrested, particularly former president lula. at that time in 2018, lula was leading the polls. and it's likely that he would go to a runoff with bolsonaro, if he was allowed. of course, his political rights were denied. also at that time, we had, before the election, we had this sense that the more traditional right wing establishment or center-right wing establishment would put forward a candidate in the person of jeraldo. he had a broad coalition of parties supporting him, he had a lot of tv time. which is a big deal in brazilian

politics. so there was this sense for many politicians, from the establishment, for some tv analysts, that the center-right would come true, that all these operations to put lula aside and put the workers body aside, all the rage, the anger against the left wing government, that that would lead to a more mainstream establishment, more right-wing candidate coming to power. and then that is completely not what happened. claudio just described how bolsonaro was elected coming from the fringes, coming from the outside. but in a sense, that is still the same predicament we face ourselves today. lula's political rights were reinstated. he might run next year. bolsonaro of course is still a very strong political force.

and the center, or the right wing center-right coalition is completely lost, they do not know exactly what to do, they don't know if they align themselves with bolsonaro, they don't know if they will promote a new candidate. so all of this will play out the next year. rob: thank you. i want to come unto nizar messari, and go back to the question that i was going to ask about the reshuffle itself. with the appointment or this move towards including more centrist candidates, within his cabinet, within his organization, do you think also narrow himself risks undermining -- do you think bolsonaro himself risks undermining his own authority, if you like, if he essentially dilutes the level of power he has having to move it out to other people in order to be able to appease his opponents? >> absolutely. perfect question. you are absolutely right. as he deepens his alliance with this group of brazilian politicians, who are reputed of

being among the most corrupt in brazilian politics. he contradicts, first of all, his message of 2018, when he won as the candidate who would bring honesty to politics. not only does he contradict that message from 2018, but he puts himself at the mercy of this group of politicians, who do politics the traditional way, and who will bargain for every single supportive vote they will give the government, which weakens the government further and further, which means -- and this group of politicians will not care about improving the economy or the social standing of the population. what matters to them are their own interests and their survival. as long as they are serving their own interests, this group of politicians will provide

bolsonaro with support. and this support will not mean that bolsonaro will improve his performance as president. it will only mean that this group of politicians will be providing him with the support he needs to avoid impeachment. there really will be serving their own interests. this is the conundrum in which bolsonaro finds himself right now. rob: let me just interrupt, because i want to go on to claudio couto, back to a point that jeraldo was making. with regard to the elections that we are going to be seeing in several months' time, he was saying that one of the problems was that the opposition had relied so much on bolsonaro's lack of electability, in a sense, that they were concentrating on different things. they essentially took their eye off the ball because they didn't think bolsonaro was going to get elected. do you think the opposition in brazil has changed enough and

realized their mistake, their previous mistake enough to be able to be a cohesive force against a bolsonaro run in a year's time? >> i think they did, but the point is we don't just have one opposition, but different sectors of the opposition today. perhaps the more competitive sector is the one represented by lula. the traditional left in brazil. and there is another sector that people call the third way, which would be something in the middle of lula and bolsonaro. it can be a centrist candidate, it can be a moderate rightist candidate. we don't know exactly what it is. but these guys, they know they must be competitive against bolsonaro. they can't occupy his space in the political dispute next year. it is impossible for this group to occupy the space that is already occupied by lula from the left and the centerleft,

even a part of the center. so it's very important for the sector of the political spectrum to weaken bolsonaro even more in order to occupy this space. the point is that we do not have just one candidate. and so, there's not a unified capacity of competition for the next elections. besides that, there is also a difficulty in presenting a real competitive and appealing candidate. it is not only a problem we have, the demand for a centrist or centrist rightist candidate, but we do not have a candidate that can fill this blank and is capable of convincing people they are the better alternative than the other two candidates. but they really realize that bolsonaro was not only a freak as some people perceived in 2018, that it would be impossible for him to be elected, considering for example the things he said. i would say that he was elected because of the things that he

said, since these are things that allowed him to present himself as a real opposer of the establishment. but now he is the establishment. and he is a different kind of establishment. so these people can present themselves as anti-bolsonaro. but it depends on what part of the opposition we are talking about. rob: jeraldo zahran, we talked briefly earlier about the support he has from the military and someone. -- and so on. i want to ask about how the military in brazil views a bolsonaro presidency. and do you think there's any possibility the military might intervene, if it looked as though a bolsonaro presidency was going to fail? >> that's a great question, and i am glad you asked. i think one of the consequences of the cabinet reshuffle we saw is a downplay of the role of the military in bolsonaro's

government. don't get me wrong, bolsonaro has thousands of military officials and civilian posts. the most number of military men in the government since the dictatorship. it even surpasses what we had in our military dictatorship here. he has a very strong support from the military and from the military leaders. but inputting -- but in bringing the coalition apart, he's giving the driving seat of the government to the politicians, not to the military. that alliance, though, will not go away. he still has a support from the military, from the leaders. he recently shuffled positions, from the branches in the navy and army. and there seems to be -- what we

hear from the military is this leadership that will not stand for a renewed lula government or election. that is not their option. it's like putting democracy in the hospice seat. but we have been getting these signals. rob: sorry to renter up to, but i wanted to ask nizar messari about the fact that given brazil only emerged from a military dictatorship back in 1985, how fresh is that in the brazilian mind, when they see the way that bolsonaro and his government are operating? >> it is somehow still fresh in people's memories. one of the things that saves bolsonaro from impeachment is the fact that he is -- that his

vice president is another nut, he is a general, a retired general. and some sectors are concerned that if will so narrow -- if bolsonaro is impeached, the military institution will take over because he is a retired general and he is part of a fringe of the military that defines the military as a moderating force in brazilian politics, as the agency that intervenes when things go bad, when things go south, so he, if he is empowered as president, there is a risk for lula, a major risk for brazilian politics and brazilian democracy. this is still fresh in people's memories.

many politicians would refrain from impeaching bolsonaro because of the risk of bringing the military back to power. in 2021. rob: his deputy may take issue from being called annette, but let's move on from there. -- a nut, but let's move on from there. bolsonaro is critical about the election process and brazil. is it too much to suggest this is happening while his approval ratings are plummeting? claudio coututo. >> yeah, that's exactly what's happened. bolsonaro realized it will be difficult for him to win the next elections, so he says all the time the political system, the political system of elections doesn't work properly, it is not reliable, today, for example, he presented evidence, he says, that there

was a major political fraud in the elections of 2014. many don't think this way. they recognize the elections. but this is not a novelty in terms of bolsonaro. even sometime before the elections, he was already talking about the problems that don't exist and don't have evidence of that in the political system of elections. the main problem for bolsonaro is not only discrediting the electoral institutions, but he is also a part of -- it is also a part of his general perspective, his general strategy of weakening political institutions of brazilian marcus lee. -- brazilian democracy. he sees one of the most important institutions, our

electoral system and electoral institutions, it is very important for him to weaken this kind of thing. rob: let me ask nizar messari this because we are getting close to the end of the program. for those opposing bolsonaro in brazil, is taking to the streets and registering publicly the only thing they can do? is there any other mechanism apart from political impeachment that can be used to remove bolsonaro by the public? or do they have to wait for the elections? >> politically, from a personal point of view, the safest bet is to wait for the elections. because pursuing impeachment or other strategies might allow bolsonaro a victimization process that will make him regain credibility with his followers. the best way to deal with this is just to allow -- to wait for

elections and to vote him out. rob: we are going to leave it there. thank you all our guests, -- thank you to all our guests, jeraldo zahran, author, brazilian political analyst from sao paulo, nizar messari, associate professor of international studies at al akhawayn university, from new haven, connecticut, and also from sao paulo, claudio couto, political scientist and associate professor at the jetulio vargas foundation. and thank you to you, too, for watching. you can see the program again anytime by visiting our website, aljazeera.com. and for further discussion, go to our facebook page. that's facebook.com/ajinsidestory. you can also join the conversation on twitter. our handle is @ajinsidestory. from me, rob matheson, and the whole team, bye for now. ♪

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