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Jair Bolsonaro, the other crazy Trump

 
Casper 2020-05-16 01:35:51 

Brazil loses second health minister in less than a month as Covid-19 deaths rise.


Brazil’s health minister has abruptly resigned after less than a month on the job – and a day after the country announced it had recorded nearly 14,000 deaths.

The sudden resignation of Nelson Teich was announced in a curt WhatsApp message from the health ministry on Friday morning, and is likely to deepen the turmoil around Brazil’s flailing response to the pandemic.

Teich was Brazil’s second health minister to leave office in less than a month.

His popular predecessor, Luiz Mandetta, was fired by he country’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro,on 16 April following disagreements over social isolation measures, which Bolsonaro has dismissed as unnecessary.

News of Teich’s resignation was greeted with dismay by doctors fighting the virus. Albert Ko, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Medicine blamed “the lack of leadership and poor governance”.




On taking office, Teich initially appeared to follow Bolsonaro’s line, arguing that bolstering Brazil’s economy was as important as controlling the pandemic’s growing death toll.

But in recent weeks Teich had increasingly disagreed with Bolsonaro over social isolation and the use of the malaria drug chloroquine to treat coronavirus.

The Brazilian president has enthusiastically backed using the drug, despite a string of medical studies showing that it has no positive effect on people suffering Covid-19, and can possibly cause other health complications.

On Thursday Bolsonaro announced that he wanted to change the protocol regulating the use of chloroquine that Mandetta had introduced.

Teich was publicly embarrassed on Monday when he discovered during a press conference that the president had issued a decree that classified gyms, beauty salons and barbers as essential services.

 
Casper 2020-05-16 01:40:23 

And if you didn't think he's another Trump, check this out


The coronavirus pandemic has halted production of Brazil’s steamy telenovela soap operas – but one small-screen blockbuster is on everyone’s lips.

A two-hour video of a heated and expletive-ridden cabinet meeting chaired by President Jair Bolsonaro last month has become the subject of an extraordinary political arm-wrestle, exposing the intrigues and eccentricities at the centre of Brazilian power.

“This meeting is the perfect portrait of the Bolsonaro administration,” said Bruno Boghossian, a columnist for the Folha de São Paulo newspaper in Brazil’s political capital, Brasília.

“Conspiracy theories, ideological issues, made-up battles, and culture wars – all right there at the heart of government.”

The video of the supposedly private plenum on 22 April was unexpectedly thrust into the public domain by the resignation of Bolsonaro’s justice minister, Sergio Moro, two days later.

Moro says the images contain key evidence supporting his allegation that Bolsonaro tried to meddle in federal police business and must be released as part of a supreme court investigation into those claims