"What began as a nationwide truck strike over rising fuel prices has spiralled into a much broader protest over a range of issues including Brazil’s healthcare, education, roads, increasing violence and political corruption. .
The strike has wrongfooted both the left and right in Brazil’s fiercely polarised political climate. President Michel Temer’s conservative government has floundered as the shutdown suffocated the Brazilian economy, forcing harvests to stop and factories to suspend or reduce production, while wiping 15% off the share price of the state-run oil company Petrobras – responsible for fuel distribution and prices here – on Monday.
But what has disturbed many Brazilians is that some protesters have called for Temer to be removed from power by the armed forces.
José Lopes, leader of the Brazilian Truck Drivers Association, warned on Monday that the strike movement had been hijacked. “There is a very strong group of interventionists,” he told reporters. “They are people who want to bring down the government.”
The subject ricocheted around Brazil. On Tuesday, Temer told foreign journalists he saw “zero risk” of a military intervention. His minister of institutional security, Gen Sergio Etchegoyen, said the armed forces had no intention of intervening and that the idea was a “subject from the last century”.
The theme is deeply controversial in Brazil, which lived under a military dictatorship for 21 years, during which hundreds of regime opponents were executed and thousands more tortured."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/30/brazil-truckers-strike-protest-military-dictatorship
The strike has wrongfooted both the left and right in Brazil’s fiercely polarised political climate. President Michel Temer’s conservative government has floundered as the shutdown suffocated the Brazilian economy, forcing harvests to stop and factories to suspend or reduce production, while wiping 15% off the share price of the state-run oil company Petrobras – responsible for fuel distribution and prices here – on Monday.
But what has disturbed many Brazilians is that some protesters have called for Temer to be removed from power by the armed forces.
José Lopes, leader of the Brazilian Truck Drivers Association, warned on Monday that the strike movement had been hijacked. “There is a very strong group of interventionists,” he told reporters. “They are people who want to bring down the government.”
The subject ricocheted around Brazil. On Tuesday, Temer told foreign journalists he saw “zero risk” of a military intervention. His minister of institutional security, Gen Sergio Etchegoyen, said the armed forces had no intention of intervening and that the idea was a “subject from the last century”.
The theme is deeply controversial in Brazil, which lived under a military dictatorship for 21 years, during which hundreds of regime opponents were executed and thousands more tortured."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/30/brazil-truckers-strike-protest-military-dictatorship