Recipe to destroy a country

From Rio de Janeiro

The amazing ability of Jair Bolsonaro and some of his ministers to fool around and carry an immense repertoire of pathetic attitudes is the most visible evidence of what is happening in Brazil. Bolsonaro has Donald Trump as a model. And in at least one aspect, he managed to defeat his idol: in his first 68 days as president, the Brazilian primate lied 82 times. Trump needed three long months to reach this mark.

The two have in addition another common point, with another victory of Brazil: the weight of their relatives in the administration. Compared to the Bolsonaro clan – the captain and his three hydrophobic children – the Trump clan is transformed into an example of balance and serenity.

While the captain spends his time spreading hatred and resentment via Twitter, some of his ministers argue fiercely to impose themselves as weird. The Minister of Foreign Affairs announces himself as a crusader against the Marxist contamination that suffocates humanity. The Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights, a fundamentalist evangelist, claims to have adopted an indigenous girl (now a young lady) without having ever completed the procedures prescribed by law: she took possession of it, and that's all; that of education, a Colombian whom no one has ever heard of, sees the communist menace as soon as he opens his eyes in the morning; and that of the Environment showed in his degree program a master's degree at Harvard without ever having set foot in a clbadroom of the institution.

The path of aberrations that brings novelties every day is centered on the guru of the Bolsonaro clan, an astrologer who presents himself as a philosopher and teacher without having even finished the first year.

The big threat, in any case, is not in the most visible part of what is usually called "government" delicacy: it is in what begins to sink members of the economic team led by Paulo Guedes, a government speculator. a market that has the maximum of his career for having worked for a government that considers paradigmatic, that of General Pinochet in Chile.

These days, this troupe has celebrated the success of the first privatization auction, that of Brazilian airports. The maximum trophy was reached by Spanish Aena, who paid out $ 500 million for the most attractive block. Detail: 51% of Aena shares belong to the state. In other words, a Spanish state-owned company has "privatized" a Brazilian state-owned company.

Guedes announced that "in the coming years", between 40 and 50% of civil servants will retire and that no competition will be opened to fill these positions. "We will invest in digitization," he said. In Brazil, the total number of serving civil servants represents 1.6% of the population. For fundamentalists of liberalism, like Guedes, it is one of the sources of the evils we suffer from. You may forget – or do not know – that in Germany, this proportion is 10.6%. In the United States, 15.3. In France, 21.4. In Sweden, 28.6. And in Norway, exactly 30.

The state bank will be gradually decimated. The Caixa Económica, with more than a century of existence, will sell the services of a credit card and a substantial source of profit, the lotteries. If it depended on the president of the Banco do Brasil, the fate of this institution would be sudden death. In addition, Petrobras' president, Roberto Castello Branco, would give the company – and the entire state – an identical destination.

Castello Branco knows that he can not realize his dream at a time. Then it will go little by little: it will begin by selling the BR distributor. The next target will be the refiner. And there is more "under study". Federal universities march towards the guillotine. In other words: while the country is distracted by scandalous aberrations, other scandals, which are devastating, are plotted in the shadows.

The merchants knew it: Bolsonaro is the perfect recipe.