President Jair Bolsonaro (no party) accused his main adversary in the presidential election campaign, PT member Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of having relations with drug traffickers, in an interview given this Sunday (31) to journalist Michele Cagiano, of Italian broadcaster SkyTV24.
According to the interview audios obtained by Sheet, the Brazilian president said that Lula “left a very strong mark on corruption in Brazil”, nearly bankrupted Petrobras and, in the 1990s, began “a big scheme together with drug trafficking to come to power”.
“A miracle saved Brazil with the fall of Dilma Rousseff and my rise in 2018,” said Bolsonaro, who also accused the PT of links with “terrorist groups around the world.”
The interview was recorded at 7:30 am this Sunday, the last day of the G20 summit, in which the leaders of the world’s largest economies pledged to contain carbon dioxide emissions and distribute vaccines against the coronavirus.
According to Bolsonaro, Lula accuses him of genocide “because he is an opportunist”. He stated that the former president would be among several “left-wing authorities in Brazil and Spain” who would have received funds from drug trafficking in Venezuela.
“This is the last portrait of Lula. In addition, he was convicted in three instances in Brazil and, by casuistry, the process was annulled in the Supreme Court,” said Bolsonaro.
With political rights rehabilitated since March, former president Lula has won at least 12 judicial victories this year in the series of lawsuits and investigations he has responded to since becoming a target of Operation Lava Jato, nearly six years ago.
In June, the plenary of the Supreme Court ratified the judgment of the Second Panel of the court that declared the partiality of former judge Sergio Moro in conducting the Guarujá (SP) triplex process, which led the former president to prison for 580 days.
Asked about Covid’s CPI, which points him as one of the main responsible for the worsening of the pandemic in Brazil and suggests that he be held responsible and investigated for nine crimes, Bolsonaro said that the commission was formed by left-wing parties in opposition to his government.
He also said that the seven senators who led the work of the CPI since its inception “did nothing during the pandemic, they let it all happen.” “My government gave all the means so that governors and mayors could fight the pandemic, following the determination of the Supreme Court,” the president said, adding that he spent US$ 100 billion to guarantee “money, means, medicines and professionals” to face the health crisis.
Bolsonaro usually says that he was prevented from acting against Covid-19 due to an April 2020 decision of the STF, which attested that states and municipalities have autonomy to determine social isolation in the midst of the pandemic. The decision, however, does not prevent the government from acting against Covid, it only establishes the concurrent competence of states, municipalities and the Union to act against the pandemic, without excluding any administrative sphere from that responsibility, the court explained at the time.
In an interview with Italian TV, Bolsonaro also stated that he was always in favor of the vaccine and that he never stopped allocating resources to the purchase of the immunizing agent, adding, however, that he is in favor of the autonomy of doctors to prescribe medicines without scientific proof.
“With regard to the vaccine, Brazil was a success. And I, in particular, adopted the line that I should send autonomy to the doctor. The doctor had to have the right, if he so desired, to treat the patient, in common agreement, with the remedy he thought was best for that moment, even though there was no scientific proof for it,” said the president.
Since the beginning of the dissemination of Covid-19 around the world, in the beginning of 2020, Bolsonaro has always spoken and acted in confrontation with protective measures, including in relation to vaccines. The president acted against the purchase of Coronavac, raised doubts about the safety of Pfizer’s immunizer and declared that he himself would not be vaccinated.
His administration was also silent in relation to several emails with proposals from the multinational pharmaceutical company to sell vaccines to the Brazilian government.
From March 2021, given the worsening of the pandemic and the success of vaccination in the country, Bolsonaro tried to reconstruct the narrative on the subject, seeking to detach himself from the label of denial in order to improve his image.
But he himself goes on to say that he was not vaccinated — which caused embarrassment on his trip to New York for the UN General Assembly in September, when he could not enter restaurants and other indoor spaces — and making statements that shake the confidence of the population in the immunizing agent.
The president also minimized the pandemic several times, calling hysteria, fantasy and “mimimi” the reaction of the population and the press to the health crisis, which has already left more than 600,000 dead in Brazil.
At another point where he is criticized by the international community, that of protecting the environment, Bolsonaro stated that “Amazon does not catch fire because it is a rainforest.”
Despite being humid, the Amazon has fires, which have occurred in record numbers during the Bolsonaro government. In August 2021, there were more than 28,000 fires in the forest — the third worst result for the period in the last 11 years, according to Inpe (National Institute for Space Research). The number is second only to those recorded in 2019 and 2020. Fires are often associated with deforestation—fire is used to burn felled vegetation and to clear pastures.
In an interview with Italian TV, although he admitted that there is “some illegal deforestation” in the country — downplaying the rates that point to worsening in this sense —, Bolsonaro said that Brazil is “an example to the world”.
“So much so that this year we’re doing so well that the press hasn’t said anything,” said the president, out of touch with the reality of news coverage in the country’s main media.
According to Bolsonaro, the negative repercussion that comes to the attention of the international community occurs “because there is a power struggle in Brazil”. In the president’s view, those who criticize him for his environmental policies overdo it and spare his predecessors.’
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