At a tense cabinet meeting on Saturday in the Brazilian president's official residence, Jair Bolsonaro found himself isolated.
BRASILIA - At a tense cabinet meeting on Saturday in the Brazilian president’s official residence, Jair Bolsonaro found himself isolated.
Elected two years ago on a promise to revive growth, Bolsonaro has shocked health experts around the world by persistently playing down the gravity of the epidemic, calling COVID-19 “a little cold” exaggerated by the media and his opponents - even after his political idol U.S. President Donald Trump walked back his own skepticism about the outbreak.
“It was a very harsh meeting,” one government official briefed on the talks told Reuters. “Mandetta is skating on thin ice, but there are some things he is not open to changing.” In the face of the climbing figures, Bolsonaro’s appeals to ‘Keep Brazil going’ on social media have stirred outrage in Congress.
For Jimena Blanco, head of Americas Risk Insights at Verisk Maplecroft consultancy, mounting calls for impeachment as the epidemic worsens raise the danger of a cabinet breakdown this month and the collapse of the government’s reform agenda. “He knows that a stalled economy will be blamed on him, and if there is social unrest and looting too,” said Lucas de Aragao, partner at Brasilia consultancy Arko Advice.For the past two weeks, Brazilians across the country have beaten pots and pans nightly against his stance in a traditional Latin American style of protest.
Even within Brazil’s powerful pro-gun caucus, whose members were among the loudest supporters of Bolsonaro’s law-and-order campaign in 2018, there is opposition to his position.
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