Brazil: Jair Bolsonaro and corruption | Opinion

From Rio de Janeiro

Brazilian far-right president Jair Bolsonaro (Photo) he acts more and more uncontrollably and aggressively.

Experts say this is a normal reaction for psychopaths: whenever they feel cornered, they react with increasing violence. And, more than cornered, what you see in Brazil is a president who melts every day.

To make matters worse, a corruption scandal broke out which could drive the military around it and the business circles that still support it, especially the agribusiness, to gradually move away.

Throughout the 2018 election campaign, which led him to the presidency, Bolsonaro repeated: he would not join the so-called ‘centrum’, a group of right-wing parties that don’t sell, are praised ( since re-democratization in 1985, they in all – all – governments), and would give corruption a relentless fight.

It was, moreover, the same “center” that his government was now renting out. Bolsonaro has forgotten that he himself, as a national deputy, was a member, albeit particularly obscure, of the “centrist”.

As for corruption, we have forgotten that, With his three sons acting as parliamentarians, he maintained the plan to hire bogus advisers and keep most of their salaries.

If it is not the embezzlement of public money, that is to say corruption, we do not know what it will be. I forgot that too The current first lady (the great defender of the traditional family has married three times) has received at least rare installments from the administrator of the family’s money.

Bomb

Well now a bomb has fallen on his knees.

Last Friday, during a session of the Senate Committee of Inquiry investigating the errors and failures in the confrontation of the covid-19 pandemic which has already killed at least 515,000 Brazilians, the country shook at hearing the complaint – with ample evidence – of an attempted corruption in the purchase of vaccines.

He also learned that Bolsonaro had been warned of the maneuver, and that he had done nothing to prevent it. And that he himself said that the person responsible was Ricardo Barros, a government spokesman in the Chamber of Deputies.

The complaint was presented to the Commission of Inquiry by an MP who was until now an ally of Bolsonaro, and who has a brother who is a stable official in the Ministry of Health.

The deputy is called Luis Claudio Miranda, and the official brother Luis Ricardo Miranda.

What both told the senators who questioned them was supported by evidence, even tapes.

It was a simple diagram: Ricardo Barros, from the time he was Minister of Health in the government of Michel Temer after the institutional coup that removed the president Dilma Rousseff As of 2016, she has ties to a pharmaceutical industry called Precisa, which was involved in sales to the national government that were never made. Variances of at least $ 4 million have already been verified.

Since last year, the Bolsonaro government has repeatedly delayed the purchase of proposed vaccines. Only from Pfizer there were more than 30 deals, since the middle of last year.

There was only one exception: the supply of the Indian vaccine Covaxin, the effectiveness of which is so dubious that it is even widely applied in India.

Under pressure from his superiors at the Ministry of Health, Luis Ricardo Miranda he called on his deputy brother, Luis Claudio, near Bolsonaro.

On Saturday, March 20, 2021, the two had a meeting with the president at the presidential residence. They did all the tests and reported the pressure, especially from the uniformed men scattered around the ministry, to accelerate the purchase of the Covaxin vaccine even without authorization from the health authorities. Would have around $ 500 million, since each dose was more expensive than all the others offered.

They heard two things from Bolsonaro. One: that the federal police would order to investigate the case. The other: “It’s a Ricardo Barros thing, and getting your hands on this is like getting your hands in some shit.”

The federal police were never called. And after three months, the purchase was not completed because Luis Ricardo Miranda refused to comply with the orders of his superiors and chose, together with his deputy brother, to file a public complaint.

And with an addition: both told Commission of Inquiry senators that one of the presidential sons, Senator Flavio, mixed with the intrigue.

The next few days will be of maximum tension, both for the Bolsonaro family and for the country.

The Senate commission of inquiry now has a new target. It is perhaps the beginning of the end of the worst government in the history of the Republic in Brazil.