Six federal highways were blocked on Friday morning, although two had been cleared by early afternoon, the federal highway police said in its first bulletin on road closures since Nov. 9, when the first wave of post-election protests dissipated. Truck drivers, some of whom claimed they would not be paid because their company accounts had been frozen for allegedly funding earlier pro-Bolsonaro protests, called on colleagues to strike in support of the far-right president. “I believe that these kinds of discussions will continue at least until Lula takes office [on 1 January]said Ana Julia Bernardi, a political scientist at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul who studies political culture and disinformation. “I don’t think the protests will last long, but they will disturb people. They sent out videos and called people to strike, but there wasn’t the same response as before.” The uproar came as Bolsonaro released a video showing him driving a tractor, a truck and a bus, which some supporters interpreted as encouragement. The hashtag #Caminhoneiros, which means truck drivers, trended on Brazilian Twitter on Friday. Bolsonaro was voted out of office on October 30, losing to his leftist nemesis Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in a run-off election. However, he has so far refused to admit defeat or congratulate his opponent, and many of his supporters have taken to the streets to protest with baseless allegations of fraud. “Brazil was stolen”: Bolsonaro’s supporters who refuse to accept the election result – video Many are calling for a return to military dictatorship, with social media awash with videos of extremists praying, begging and serenading the military outside barracks across Brazil. Bolsonaro’s supporters blocked hundreds of major roads and highways in the days after the election, and it took officials more than a week to clear the roadblocks of parked vehicles, burned tires and other debris. In his only public appearance since the election, Bolsonaro finally asked his supporters to go home, saying Brazil’s economy could not grow if the roads were not clean. His supporters, however, still refused to back down and it took court orders and battalions of law enforcement officers to clear many of the streets. Bolsonaro has been running wild ever since, with websites estimating from his official engagement calendar that he worked about 25 minutes a day in the 10 days after the vote. However, his team updated his social media feeds and did so again on TikTok on Friday. The short video showed him driving a tractor, a truck and a bus to the soundtrack of Howlin Wolf’s Howlin at the Moon. Bolsonaro did not speak in the video or make any statement, but the vehicles have been used frequently in previous demonstrations. The dismal display comes a week after the military – one of the former captain’s main constituencies – published a 63-page report on the election process, which found no evidence of fraud. Bolsonaro has long claimed that Brazil’s electronic voting machines were prone to fraud, although he offered no evidence. The military report acknowledged the reliability of the ballots, saying there was no indication of “fraud or inconsistency in the electronic ballots or the 2022 election process.”
