Bolsonaro’s latest crisis threatens Brazil’s virus response
By DAVID BILLER and MARCELO DE SOUSA
April 28, 2020
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — As Brazil careens toward a full-blown public health emergency and economic meltdown, President Jair Bolsonaro has managed to add a third ingredient to the toxic mix: political crisis. Even if it doesn’t speed his downfall, it will render Brazilians more vulnerable to the pandemic.
Bolsonaro’s decision last week to replace the federal police chief – and cross his popular justice minister, Sérgio Moro, who quit and alleged impropriety – has sparked an investigation into the president’s actions that will be conducted by the federal police itself. Already the scandal threatens to supplant coronavirus as the day’s most urgent matter. ...
The International Monetary Fund this month forecast Brazil’s GDP will plunge 5.3% in 2020. That would be the deepest single-year tumble since at least 1901, when national accounts data from the government’s economics institute began. Brazil contracted 2% in 1918, the year of the Spanish flu pandemic, according to the institute. ...
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