People protest against the Brazilian president after the resignation of popular minister Sérgio Moro. There were calls for Bolsonaro’s impeachment and an investigation into claims he had improperly interfered in the country’s federal police.
Bolsonaro denied claims from his outgoing justice minister that he had sought to appoint a new federal police chief in order to gain access to secret intelligence reports
President Jair Bolsonaro denies he sought to influence federal police inquiries
Brazil’s government has been plunged into turmoil after the resignation of one of Jair Bolsonaro’s most powerful ministers sparked protests, calls for the president’s impeachment and an investigation into claims he had improperly interfered in the country’s federal police.
In a rambling televised address late on Friday, Brazil’s embattled president denied claims from his outgoing justice minister Sérgio Moro that he had sought to appoint a new federal police chief in order to gain access to secret intelligence reports – for reasons that remain murky.
Continue reading...Brazil’s President Bolsonaro has described coronavirus as a “little flu” and resisted lockdown measures even as the death toll rises. But in Rio’s poorest favelas, where people live in overcrowded conditions and lack proper sanitation, they are bracing for the worst. Buba Aguiar is an activist in Acari who is taking matters into her own hands, soliciting online donations to buy food parcels and basic coronavirus kit - soap, masks - for her neighbours who cannot afford to stop working and stay at home. As Acari records its first coronavirus death, we follow Buba through a typical day fighting to help her community in the face of government inaction.
Continue reading...Far-right president deemed ‘deplorable’ for flouting social distancing rules again – while coughing repeatedly – to bolster protests amid coronavirus
Former presidents, politicians and newspaper editorial boards have lined up to denounce the “moronic” and “anti-democratic” behaviour of Brazil’s far-right leader after he hit the streets to egg on protesters demanding a return to military dictatorship.
As the number of deaths caused by Covid-19 rose to nearly 2,500 on Sunday, Jair Bolsonaro left his presidential palace in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, to fraternize with flag-waving radicals.
Continue reading...The far-right Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro ,joined an anti-lockdown coronavirus protest in Brasilia on Sunday. Standing on the back of a truck Bolsonaro said to protestors 'I'm here because I believe in you. You are here because you believe in Brazil'. Brazil, as it stands, is close to nearly 40,000 confirmed coronavirus cases
Continue reading...Brazil’s congress has given President Jair Bolsonaro an ultimatum to release the results of his coronavirus tests within 30 days, amid widespread speculation that he has been infected with Covid-19.
“Brazil needs the truth! Was the president infected?” said the motion proposed by the leftist congressman Rogério Correa and agreed by leaders of the chamber of deputies.
Continue reading...Residents fearful how their families will cope as food runs out and Jair Bolsonaro undermines lockdown message
Renato Rosas knows what poverty feels like. The musician and biomedical salesman grew up in one of Brazil’s biggest favelas, in the Amazon city of Belém. Relatives still live in the wooden stilt houses that line the black, polluted rivers running into Guajará Bay.
“It is the most extreme poverty,” he said of the Baixadas da Estrada Nova Jurunas neighbourhood where floods, deadly sucuri snakes lurking in floating rubbish and armed drug gangs are among the challenges.
Continue reading...Concerns grow that by downplaying threat, Brazil’s president risks public health crisis
Medical experts have said they fear that Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, could be hastening the country’s march towards a devastating public health crisis like those to have hit northern Italy and New York by undermining social distancing measures.
Bolsonaro is one of just four world leaders still downplaying the threat of coronavirus to public health, alongside the authoritarian presidents of Nicaragua, Belarus and Turkmenistan.
Continue reading...President again undermines efforts to tackle coronavirus by criticising state’s governor
The Brazilian president has further undermined efforts to control the spread of coronavirus by criticising what he called “dictatorial” moves to stop citizens going to the beach.
In an interview on Thursday, Jair Bolsonaro hit out at Rio de Janeiro’s governor, Wilson Witzel, who this week ordered the state’s 17 million citizens to stay at home – and off the sands.
Continue reading...Science and welfare are at the heart of this crisis – which is bad for right-wing populists. But they won’t be wrongfooted for long
The populist right has built their electoral strength on boisterousness and arrogant self-confidence. Yet, amid the coronavirus pandemic, figures such as Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Jair Bolsonaro seem to be confounded. They are either desperately clinging to a narrative of normality (it’s just a flu), or have already been forced to make embarrassing U-turns acknowledging the gravity of the crisis.
Boris Johnson had to abandon the government’s “herd immunity” strategy when new scientific evidence made apparent its horrific human cost. He recently tested positive for the virus and is now accused of complacency and lack of leadership. In Italy, Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League party and former deputy prime minister, appears downbeat, unable to wear the robes of the responsible statesman this emergency calls for; his unabashed criticism of government has even earned him the label “unpatriotic”. In France, Marine Le Pen seems to have vanished altogether from the media, while Bolsonaro’s persistence in denying the crisis is leaving him increasingly isolated.
Continue reading...President accused of cynically and criminally putting business interests over public safety
Some of the most distinguished members of the Brazilian left have demanded Jair Bolsonaro’s resignation in a biting declaration that criticised what they called his cynical and criminally irresponsible handling of the coronavirus crisis.
Related: Bolsonaro threatens to sack health minister over coronavirus criticism
Continue reading...UK prime minister’s refusal to criticise Amazon fires and sharp rise in deforestation praised by Brazilian ambassador
Boris Johnson was personally thanked by the Brazilian government for refusing to support European action over the Amazon fires, according to documents obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
As the rainforest burned last summer – fuelled by a sharp rise in deforestation that critics blame partly on President Jair Bolsonaro’s agenda – Johnson criticised a threat by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to block the EU’s Mercosur trade deal with Brazil.
Continue reading...President suggests citizens may already have antibodies that help virus ‘not to proliferate’, as cases rise to nearly 3,000
Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro has tried to reassure his citizens over the threat of coronavirus by claiming Brazilians can bathe in excrement “and nothing happens”.
As Brazil’s Covid-19 death toll rose to 77, Bolsonaro scotched the idea Latin America’s biggest economy could soon face a situation as severe as the United States, where there have been more than 1,000 deaths and more than 83,000 cases.
Continue reading...People in São Paulo banged pots and pans in solidarity with healthcare staff as the city respects a 15-day lockdown to combat the spread of coronavirus. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has dropped in the ratings as he downplayed the pandemic, berating governors of key states including Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, who have ordered residents to stay at home
Brazil’s president uses national televised address to dismiss state-based health measures ‘scorched earth’ tactics
Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has claimed he “wouldn’t feel anything” if infected with coronavirus and rubbished efforts to contain the illness with large-scale quarantines as his country’s two biggest cities went into shutdown in a desperate bid to save lives.
In a televised address to the nation on Tuesday night, Bolsonaro slammed what he branded the economically damaging “scorched earth” tactics being used to slow the advance of an illness that has now claimed about 15,000 lives around the world.
Continue reading...Rightwing governments have denied the problem and been slow to act. With coronavirus and the climate, this costs lives
• See all our coronavirus coverage
The coronavirus pandemic has brought urgency to the defining political question of our age: how to distribute risk. As with the climate crisis, neoliberal capitalism is proving particularly ill-suited to this.
Like global warming, but in close-up and fast-forward, the Covid-19 outbreak shows how lives are lost or saved depending on a government’s propensity to acknowledge risk, act rapidly to contain it, and share the consequences.
Continue reading...Citizens make anger known by hitting pots and pans from their windows and balconies
Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, is facing an intensifying public backlash after his muddled reaction to the coronavirus crisis sparked five successive nights of protests and predictions that his political authority had sustained a potentially fatal blow.
Brazil has recorded 1,128 coronavirus cases and 18 deaths, with the country’s health minister last week saying the public health system was likely to collapse by the end of April.
Continue reading...The populist leaders of Brazil and Mexico have come under fire after publicly thumbing their noses at growing fears over the spread of the coronavirus.
Related: Trump 'offers large sums' for exclusive access to coronavirus vaccine
Continue reading...Jair Bolsonaro’s apparent endorsement of protests designed to cow Brazil’s democratic institutions has sparked outrage across the political spectrum with one lawmaker warning of a return to the dark days of dictatorship if the demonstrations are not opposed.
Hardcore supporters of Brazil’s far-right president are planning nationwide protests on 15 March and have been flooding social media with propaganda videos and fliers attacking members of Congress – and even proposing a return to military rule under Bolsonaro.
Continue reading...The group played a key role in the election of the country’s far-right president and have become increasingly assertive
With drummers pounding out samba rhythms through the rain, this might almost have been just another one of the hundreds of street parties of Rio’s world-famous carnival.
But nobody at the I’m Full of Love Samba Street Party on Copacabana Beach was drunk or in costume, few bystanders were dancing – and the group on the sound truck was singing about Jesus.
Continue reading...