Yesterday, Jair Bolsonaro, a controversial former paratrooper who built his electoral campaign around pledges to crush crime, corruption and the supposed threat from communism, was inaugurated as the President of Brazil.
Bolsonaro’s inauguration has brought to mind the 1967 presidential ceremony in Brasilia of President Costa e Silva, who was one of Brazil’s military dictators he so admires. It was a State occasion where pageantry and pomp came undone, thanks to disorganisation and a deluge of rain.
For Britain the inauguration was a serious matter. They had sent a Foreign Office Minister, Lord Chalfont, as special representative of the Queen. On both sides national pride was at stake and decorum was important.
But the visit was a fiasco. These are excerpts from the then British ambassador’s despatch to London, which I have extracted from a brilliant collection of ambassadorial reports compiled by Matthew Parris.
“I hope that the Minister of State feels that the experience was worth the discomfort. Both were startling… If agents of Fidel Castro or some other bitter enemy of the Brazilian regime had taken over the programme, they could not have devised a performance better calculated to discredit Brazilian claims to a place among the advanced and efficient countries of the world.”
The arrangements were chaotic and deplorable. It is indeed hard to reconcile the genius which created the near-miraculous city of Brasilia with the grotesque confusion that attended almost every moment of last week’s ceremonies. But in that contradiction of extremes, I am told, lies the charm of Brazil.
Brazil has long been proud of her Foreign Service. And yet last week it fell flat on its face in the puddles of Brasilia with a splash that has left a sadly tarnished image on the unlucky spectators. Brasilia is the most modern and the best planned city in the world: there is not a traffic light or a right-angle intersection in the whole place: yet on Wednesday night the authorities managed to tie up the presidential guests in one long, snarling, blinding traffic jam.
We left the embassy at 8 o’clock… to catch the special aircraft to Brasilia. Here the visitors received their first baptism of Brazilian incompetence. Together with 69 other special missions, we waited three hours and 20 minutes: we waited on the tarmac of the military airport, at a temperature of 90 degrees Fahrenheit and a humidity of 90 per cent; we waited without chairs, without drinks, without parasols, without information and without apologies.
The next morning, after being waved halfway round the city by the traffic police, we eventually ploughed into the congress, where three or four thousand more guests had been invited than the building could possibly accommodate. The space reserved in the gallery had long since been invaded.
Eventually we fought our way, elbows and knees, to a position in the gangway at the rear of the floor where, by holding on tightly to the backs of the last row of seats in front of us, we were able more or less to see and hear the ceremony of swearing in the new President and Vice-President.
Emerging buffeted but still buoyant from the congress, we walked across to the Planalto Palace to witness the handing over of the presidential authority. Here we were herded into a roped-off section at the back of the floor, from where we could neither see nor hear anything that was going on. At this point my Swedish colleague left the palace in a rage, and I heard a Norwegian colleague threatening the Chief of Protocol that he would advise the King of Norway to cancel his imminent visit. But tempers were to become more frayed than this before our longest day was out.
At 4.30pm Lord Chalfont and the delegation took part in a short and reasonably well organised ceremony at which the special missions were presented to the new President. The Americans presented a complicated and hideous silver writing set; the Japanese handed over what looked like a Jack-in-the-box; some other [Asian delegations] gave the astonished President a sort of yo-yo.
Weary figures in dripping tails and sodden ribbons wandered forlornly under the rain searching for their vanished cars
After supper we returned to the hotel to struggle into our white ties. And then our troubles really began. My wife and I were lucky in that our car only took one hour to cover the four miles from the hotel to the Alvorada Palace where the President was giving his great reception. It was raining heavily, there appeared to be practically no police attempting to control the traffic and the vast avenues, brilliantly designed by the greatest urbanists of our day (Oscar Niemeyer) for the unimpeded flow of practically any number of vehicles, within a few minutes were choked with traffic driving every way regardless of direction.
Even the President got stuck, and eventually, fought his way through to his own reception an hour late. Lord and Lady Chalfont took two-and-a-half hours to make the journey. A large number of delegations simply stayed in their cars and went straight on round and back home.
At this point I felt that patience and good manners risked defeating the wider purposes of diplomacy. I accordingly sought out the Vice Chief of Protocol and told him in clear and cogent terms that… unless rapid and adequate steps were taken, Lord Chalfont would return to London in a mood somewhat less than gruntled. A few minutes later Lord and Lady Chalfont were summoned to the Presidential presence.
This tattered day was now drawing to its tattered close. Weary figures in dripping tails and sodden ribbons wandered forlornly under the rain searching for their vanished cars. We found ours after an hour and 40 minutes. But fate had one sweet in store for us. The Spanish Special Mission was led by the Head of General Franco’s military household.
This splendidly be-medalled figure, in a beautiful white uniform and scarlet sash, pardonably tired and perhaps a little unobservant, mistook the ornamental water in front of the Palace for the gleaming wet pavement and stepped right into it, disappearing with dignity up to his Golden Fleece. This restored the evening for me. “Gibraltar to you!” I thought as we climbed into the car for home.
My copy for this article was submitted before Bolsonaro’s inauguration, which I am confident passed without a hitch. A happy New Year to all my readers.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece