Brazil: a non-credible pseudo-resignation of Jair Bolsonaro | Weakened and defensive, the president threatened not to stand again

From Brasilia

Jair Bolsonaro he is injured, but not fatally. In recent days, the President of Brazil has made some startling statements which may be symptoms of his deteriorating political health.

This Wednesday he questioned his candidacy for re-election in the elections next October when it is likely that he will have to face the favorite in the polls, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, of the Workers’ Party (PT). “I haven’t started, I still don’t know if I’m going to be a candidate” said the head of state in a radio report. The unexpected and unreliable disinterest in fighting for a second term runs counter to what Bolsonaro himself has said over the past two years when he often spoke, explicitly or with innuendo, of his vocation to stay. at the Planalto Palace.

On Tuesday, Bolsonaro made another hilarious statement. He assured that Dilma Rousseff, also of the PT, had been re-elected thanks to a ballot fraud played in 2014 against Aecio Neves, candidate of the conservative Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB). The retired captain has promised to present evidence of this alleged PT maneuver next week. It’s such a far-fetched complaint that even Neves himself, a participant in the 2016 coup against Dilma, told CNN he was not aware of any evidence of vote theft in 2014.

Emulate the wackiest version Donald trump when the Republican denounced a fraud of Joe biden During the presidential elections of November 2020, Bolsonaro frequently mentions the possible manipulation of the Brazilian elections of 2022 through the hacking of data collection systems. Based on this assumption, he calls for a constitutional reform by means of which the printed vote is restored. Due to the unwarranted nature of the proposal, the president had no support, not even from the ruling right-wing party bloc known as “Centrao”.

On Sunday, shortly after his release from a private hospital in São Paulo where he was hospitalized for just over three days, Bolsonaro assured that the former Minister of Health Eduardo Pazuello, his man of confidence, did not commit any irregularity in the millionaire contracts of purchase of vaccines suspected of bribes investigated in the Senate.

A few hours before this distinction to General Pazuello, the newspaper San Pablo leaf posted a video where the military claims to have made a deal to purchase Chinese coronavirus vaccines, Coronavac, at $ 28 per unit, with the market price of $ 10 per dose.

Demonstration at the door

Evidence of corruption splashes into both the occupant of Planalto and military personnel at the Ministry of Health during the pandemic that claimed the lives of 545,000 Brazilians.

Public opinion seems to have understood that when the far-right leader spoke out against buying vaccines from laboratories – delaying vaccination and causing deaths – he was ordering or consenting to generals and colonels to negotiate millions of doses. with intermediaries in exchange for bribes. .

Anyone who observes this vaccine scandal in perspective will come to the conclusion that the current governor has transferred the fraudulent operations (appropriation and money laundering, influence peddling, pacts with paramilitaries, etc.) that have characterized his 28 years as a as federal deputy to Planalto. For it polls show candidate Bolsonaro has declining intentions to vote by 2022, and President Bolsonaro has less and less credibility.

Faced with this unfavorable political situation, he announced this Wednesday changes in his government with the possible appointment of the senator. Ciro Walnut as chief of staff. Congressman commands the powerful “Centrao” parliamentary group whose support Bolsonaro is awaiting to prevent the approval of the impeachment of MPs and hamper investigations into corruption in the Senate.

At the same time, it allowed the recreation of the Ministry of Labor (extinct after the 2016 coup) to transcend, now under the name of Ministry of Social Security and Employment as a means of meeting the demand for 14.8 million unemployed and 6 million “disenchanted”, who are the workers who, in addition to being unemployed, have stopped looking for it.

These are initiatives that can serve as a pulmotor to give survival to a suffering administration that hopes to recover in the coming months on horseback. Five percent gross product growth and a return to normal as the vaccination progresses. Either way, this oxygen is slow to reverse growing popular discontent: This Saturday will take place the fourth mobilization, since the end of May, in dismissal and repudiation of the genocide. It is summoned by the social movements, the PT and the parties of the democratic, popular and left camp.