The mood between Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and the Minister of Mines and Energy, Bento Albuquerque, soured this Tuesday (5). The president blamed Bento not only for the unsuccessful nomination of Adriano Pires for the presidency of Petrobras, but also for the proposal to postpone the meeting that will change the company’s board in a week.
According to palace assistants, the chief executive is quite annoyed with the imbroglio involving Petrobras, and the wear and tear is being attributed mainly to the minister.
The assessment is that there was haste in presenting a name that, shortly after, did not hold up. Now, the watchword in the Plateau is discretion regarding the next nominees.
Postponing the assembly is still considered an option by the government. But, under this proposal, General Silva e Luna, fired by Bolsonaro, would remain in office indefinitely, until the new names are approved.
Adriano Pires declined the invitation following the decision of Rodolfo Landim, president of Flamengo appointed to preside over the oil company’s board of directors.
Faced with the minister’s difficulty in finding two names to compose the company’s board, one of the proposals presented was to postpone the general shareholders’ meeting -which will define the new composition of Petrobras’ board of directors on the 13th- and continue for a while with General Joaquim Silva e Luna in command.
Planalto has already announced that Silva e Luna will no longer be at the head of Petrobras and the general himself expressed himself as betrayed by the way the process was conducted.
The exit presented by Bento angered Bolsonaro even more.
Planalto advisers claim that the president even swore when referring to the minister last Monday (4), when Bento was still trying to find a way out to keep Adriano Pires’s nomination.
Bolsonaro assessed that Bento was politically unskilled and that it would be up to him to bar Pires’ nomination knowing that he would not pass the scrutiny of the Petrobras personnel committee.
Adriano Pires is the owner of CBIE (Brazilian Infrastructure Center), a consultancy that serves companies that have even been involved in disputes with Petrobras.
For Bolsonaro, accepting this nomination would be taking too high a risk during the reelection campaign.
Comparisons with the management of the PT, which according to the government rigged the company for misdeeds, would be inevitable and indefensible, according to reports.
In the financial market, Bento’s political erosion within the government is considered so high that many prefer not to make appointments for Petrobras to the minister.
Without naming names, one of these interlocutors said that one of the guests refused the minister’s invitation because his nominees are already under suspicion in the Planalto and that this situation weakened Bento Albuquerque too much.
They also believe that the minister is no longer able to resist possible interventions by the Planalto in Petrobras’ pricing policy. Therefore, they prefer to stay out of this game.
This week, the Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, started defending his special secretary Caio Paes de Andrade for the command of Petrobras.
Although he did not want to get involved again with the appointment of a president for Petrobras, Guedes defends his secretary, according to advisers.
However, Caio appears involved in a lawsuit in which one of the companies, Conclusiva Empreendimentos e Participações, raises suspicion that the secretary may have used his position to search his financial data to pass them on to another company that belongs to a friend of Minister Paulo Guedes and with whom Conclusiva is fighting a legal battle.
Bento also got tired of Guedes, who did not like the proposal defended by the minister – and which is being processed in Congress –, to create subsidies to contain the rise in fuel prices.
On the political wing, Bento also measures forces with the Chief Minister of the Civil House, Ciro Nogueira (PP-RN), who, in order to add support from the center, wants to indicate names for regulatory agencies linked to the Ministry of Mines and Energy (such as ANP and Aneel), state-owned electric companies, such as Itaipu, and Petrobras.
Centrão parties are the government’s support base and should take over Bolsonaro’s reelection campaign.
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