RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In an editorial on Monday, January 13th, the newspaper ‘O Estado de S.Paulo’, known as “Estadão”),criticized the lack of “defined direction” of Jair Bolsonaro at the head of the government, classified as lost by the Mesquita family’s publication, which often serves as a spokesman for the financial system and the São Paulo business community.
“At the beginning of his second year, Jair Bolsonaro’s government shows clear signs of lacking a defined course. Every week new measures and actions emerge, absolutely pointless and without a common goal,” reads the text, which adds that Bolsonaro is removing “effectiveness from state action”.
“This lack of coordination causes friction and tensions that are absolutely unnecessary among government agencies.”
The newspaper directly criticizes two of Bolsonaro’s recent measures: that of granting subsidies in the electricity bills of religious temples and the reduction and impending killing of the Insurance of Personal Damages Caused by Motor Vehicles of Land Roads (DPVAT).
“As expected, the economic team voiced resistance to the proposed subsidy on the electricity bill for churches. The Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, has always advocated the need to reduce this type of benefit,” says the newspaper, always coming out in defense of Paulo Guedes’ neoliberal policies, trying to distance the minister from the government.
According to Estadão, “the symptoms that the government is lost are abundant”. “But there are reforms to be made, and this is the obvious path that the country must follow. There is a country to be governed. All you have to do is to want to do it,” states the newspaper.