Brazil: the “vaccination” broke and Jair Bolsonaro was on the ropes | The president would have approved the overcharged purchase of 20 million doses of the Indian drug Covaxin

From Brasilia. The “vaccinated” has Jair Bolsonaro against the ropes. The baffled face displayed by the president on Friday in the face of vaccine-related corruption complaints evoked that of Fernando Collor de Mello, the president was ejected from the Planalto Palace in 1992 due to a series of malicious maneuvers that have filled the patience of public opinion. Thirty-one years after the fall of Collor, Brasilia was shaken by the revelation of this scandal due to a dubious contract, signed with the backing of Bolsonaro, for the overcharged purchase of 20 million doses of the Indian drug Covaxin ,

According to Senator Omar Aziz, head of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (ICC) on the pandemic , “This is the most serious complaint filed against the government to date, it may pose a serious headache for Planalto.” Turn the senator Humberto Costa, ICC member and former Minister of Health in the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, shot dead: “We must go fully into the investigation to find out if there has been corruption and if the president has engaged in administrative irregularities or procrastination”, two offenses that may justify a possible request for dismissal, he said. he adds.

Costa, cautious, recommended that the ICC be provided with all possible documents, and not just testimonies, before drawing the conclusions in order to safeguard the “credibility” of the body. Aziz and Costa participated this Friday in the ICC session during which two witnesses claimed that Bolsonaro was personally informed at the Alvorada Palace, official residence, of the maneuvers concocted around this operation for $ 300 million and they reported that apparently the ruler took no action to prevent them. This attitude, reported to the ICC by MP Luis Claudio Miranda and his brother Luis Ricardo Miranda, official of the Ministry of Health, that would make the president at least an accomplice in various possible crimes.

Witnesses referred to dialogues with General Eduardo Pazuello, in which it was the Minister of Health who led the negotiations for the vaccination of Indians. The words of the Miranda brothers were rejected by pro-government senators during the tense hearing held in the Senate precinct where cries and uproar were not lacking.

The de facto leader of this bloc is Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, son of the president and someone well connected with the lobby of private clinics and laboratories. Flavio is also accused of being a legislator who listens to parapolitical “militias” and the “Bloque de la Bala”, made up of police officers. Preparatory meetings for this ruling ICC party take place in the brand new home of the presidential son in Brasilia, acquired for more than a million dollars, an amount out of all proportion to his income as a deputy.

The ICC session started more than an hour late, at 3:30 p.m. local time, when MP Miranda arrived protected by a bulletproof vest and escorted by elements of the legislative police. The lawmaker, a Bolsonarist who appears to have regretted the affiliation, said he and his brother are the targets of death threats, which have also hit several opposition lawmakers who are members of the ICC. As we can see, the deliberations of this parliamentary body are a political battleground which, depending on its evolution, can call into question the continuity of Bolsonaro, just as was the case with the ICC opened against Collor three decades ago.

The parallels between Bolsonaro and Collor serve to describe the situation, although they are insufficient to understand its substance. This is because there is a substantial difference between the two: Collor had been abandoned by virtually all factual power groups by the end of 1992, which has yet to happen with Bolsonaro, which also has the almighty military party by its side and retains reasonable popularity.

The conflict between the ruling party and the opposition may bring more of a surprise to the ICC. What started on Friday is an open duel, the victory of which is not guaranteed for the opposition. There are at least four questions that opponents of the government will ask in upcoming hearings whose answers may reveal a corruption plot and shed light on Bolsonaro’s genocidal strategy in the face of a disease that has killed 510,000 people.

One. Why did Bolsonaro ask the Prime Minister of India, the far right Narendra Modi, to facilitate negotiations for the vaccine, while proselytizing against vaccination? In addition to discredit Chinese Coronavc in addition to hampering the purchase of Russian Sputnik.

2. Why Brasilia agreed to pay more money for Covaxin than for the vaccines known as Pfizer and AstraZenca? How to explain that the negotiations for this vaccine were twice as fast as for the others?

Three. Why the company, Accurate, negotiated negotiations, given that it is a company investigating corruption cases related to the drug industryHow much money did Precisa charge? Is there a relationship between Bolsonaro and this company? Long ago the deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, another presidential son, lobbied for Precisa at a state bank.

Four. How far does the military’s complicity go with these alleged irregularities?. the General Eduardo Pazuello, then Minister of Health, and key man in this matter, took office with the authorization of the army.

Iracundo, without hiding his disgust at the (more than founded) suspicions of corruption in the vaccine contract, Bolsonaro reacted virulently this Friday morning to questions from a group of journalists who inquired about the scandal in the city of Sorocaba , inside San. Pablo. “My God, as far as I know there is nothing wrong with this contract, there is no overcharging, this is a lie,” was one of the first responses. Faced with well-asked cross-questions, the captain gets carried away until exploding: “stop asking yourself these questions, go back to university, be reborn, you are ridiculous”. And he completed with a direct threat, “Those who want to try me for corruption are going to have a hard time.”

Bolsonaro’s mistreatment of journalists makes his character fascist, but these days it perhaps reflects his helplessness in the face of a scandal that seems to be spiraling out of control and ends the moralizing rhetoric with which he won the 2018 election, at force to attack. Workers Party (PT) and in Lula then banned.

And not only: while suspicions are lowered on the ex-soldier and his popularity is declining, that of the leader of the PT is rising. A survey published this Friday by the Ipec agency indicates that the ex-president would win the 2022 elections with 49% of the vote against the 23 of the ultra-right leader.