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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro greets a stopover at the Barreiros Bridge amid the coronavirus pandemic on August 7, 2020 in Sao Vicente, Brazil. Credit – Alexandre Schneider – Getty Images
Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, threatened to punch a journalist in the face Sunday after he asked about the mysterious bills made to Brazil’s first girl through a circle of associate relatives under investigation into corruption.
“I’d like to punch you in the mouth,” the president told a reporter at O Globo, one of Brazil’s most important newspapers, as he walked past Brasilia Cathedral, a video broadcast through the newspapers. The journalist had asked Bolsonaro from the Brazilian media for reports that Fabracio Queiroz, who has known the president since the 1980s, and his wife made deposits of almost $16,000 into Michelle Bolsonaro’s bank account between 2011 and 2017.
Queiroz was arrested in June as part of a corruption investigation through the Rio de Janeiro state government over the president’s eldest son, F.R. Bolsonaro. The investigation relates to an alleged embezzle and cash laundering plan during the state legislature term, where it served from 2003 to 2019. Queiroz has been postulated as a driving force for part of this era and researchers say huge sums of cash are coming in. and out of your account in 2017 you may simply be connected to the system. Now a senator, Fluvio, denounced the investigation as a politically pleading attack on his family. Queiroz’s lawyer called his arrest “totally unnecessary.”
Brazilian media reported last August that investigators had presented new queiroz invoices to Michelle Bolsonaro, contradicting previous explanations given about transactions.
The consultation “President Bolsonaro, why did his wife Michelle get [$15,800] from Fabrocio Queiroz?” It temporarily went viral on Sunday after the altercation with the O Globo journalist, while figures from Culture, media and Brazilian politics tweeted it to the president, adding YouTuber Felipe Neto and music legend Caetano Veloso. In total, the factor has been repeated more than a million times online, according to BBC Brazil. The president did not respond to the inquiries, but tweeted Monday morning accusing O Globo of bias against him.
The accusations about his circle of relatives are a source of political confrontation for Bolsonaro, who campaigned for the presidency with the promise of eliminating corruption among the Brazilian elite. He faces crises on several other fronts. The Supreme Court is investigating allegations through former Justice Minister Sergio Moro that the president abused his force by meddling in federal police. COVID-19’s Bagnaro control, which he described as a “small flu,” also galvanized political and public opposition to its leaders. Both the president and his wife tested positive for the virus in July after spending months publicly resisting social estrangement and dressed in masks.
Despite these controversies, a ballot published on August 14 found that Bolsonaro’s approval ratings have peaked since his term began in January 2019. According to the national Pollfolha ballot, 37% of respondents must be smart or smart, compared to 32% in June. Only 34% of his government was bad or terrible, 10 fewer than last month.
Analysts attribute this growing popularity to the Brazilian government’s dispersion of emergency aid, which has become a lifeline for the poorest in a country that still faces the effect of the 2015-16 economic crisis when the pandemic began. “It is difficult to underestimate the effect of emergency coronavirus pay on voters’ lives,” says Gustavo Ribeiro, political analyst and founder of the Brazilian Report. “For 14 million people, lately it has been the only source of income.” The program, which has already charged tens of billions of dollars, will expire in September, but Bolsonaro said on August 19 that smaller bills could be completed by the end of 2020.
Rodrigo Soares, a Brazilian public policy professor at Columbia University, said scandals around the president’s family circle are unlikely to have an effect on his political base, which represents about a third of Brazilian voters. “It is now quite transparent that accusations of corruption don’t really have strength among their main supporters,” he says. “Between these, I don’t think the so-called [president’s] bribery program has ever been the main point.”