Fears of violence on Brazil’s streets as millions rally

The supporters of Jair Bolsonaro are not that hard to find in Sinop, which is an agricultural boomtown in the Brazilian Amazon.

Around 80 per cent of voters backed the country’s ultra-conservative leader in the 2018 election.

“He’s a president of the people,” the Guardian quoted Marcos Watanabe, who is the head of the city’s conservative association, sporting a T-shirt stamped with Bolsonaro’s name.

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The people are also as passionate as the president of Sinop’s farmers’ union, Ilson José Redivo.

He placed a billboard of his leader outside its headquarters with the slogan that read, "We believe in God and we value the family. We’re with Bolsonaro.”

Redivo is one of the millions of Bolsonaro devotees expected to hit the streets on 7 September for one in a series of mass rallies that have jolted Brazilian politics and left many citizens fretting over the future of their country’s democracy.

“It will be the largest demonstration Brazil has ever seen,” Redivo claimed.

He further said that at least 20 buses were setting off from the state capital, Cuiabá, as well as other towns and cities across the agricultural heartlands.

Meanwhile, Bolsonaro earlier said that he sees only three alternatives for his future: prison, death or victory.

In the polls, the right-wing populist leader is still trailing left-wing former President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro told evangelical leaders, "I have three alternatives for my future: being arrested, killed or victory."