Military and Legislative Leadership Intervene to Keep Mandetta in Office, Despite Bolsonaro

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Uncomfortable about having a subordinate who thinks and acts differently from himself, over the weekend President Jair Bolsonaro had signalled his intent to dismiss Luiz Henrique Mandetta from the Ministry of Health on Monday and replace him with Federal Deputy Osmar Terra (MDB).

The President backed down on Monday.

As soon as the news surfaced, powerful pressures arose to prevent the President from carrying out the dismissal of the Minister, who is more popular than his own boss, due to the coordination of actions to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

There were four sources of criticism against the decision contemplated by the President:

1) Army generals, one of them on active duty, with a seat on the Planalto Palace, said the President would lack popular and political support for a dismissing a Minister who has followed the recommendations of the world’s leading health authorities;

2) Legislators warned him of the potential to further disrupt the measures pending in the legislature and to see an impeachment petition against him prosper in the medium term;

3) In the judiciary, at least two Supreme Court justices complained of a lack of political leadership in the country; and

4) On social media, demonstrations of support for Mandetta proliferated. The Minister also earned a display of support among his own: some 150 officials from the Ministry of Health protested in front of the body’s headquarters to threaten a collective resignation if his dismissal should materialize.

New round

On Sunday, Bolsonaro had once again demonstrated his dissatisfaction with Mandetta’s performance in the portfolio. Speaking to a group of religious supporters who were waiting for him outside the Alvorada Palace, the President said that there were Ministers who were feeling like stars and that he could use the “the stroke of his pen” against them. He did not mention names, but the message was directed at the Minister of Health.

“For some people in my government, something went to their heads. They’re thinking they’re special. They were normal people, but suddenly they became stars. They’re talking too much. They’re provocative,” he said.

“But their time hasn’t come yet. Their time will come. My pen works. I’m neither afraid to use the pen nor terrified. And it will be used for the good of Brazil, not for my own good. It’s nothing personal. We will win this one,” the President said.

On Saturday, the Minister gave another demonstration of the spotlight he has attracted: he recorded a video for top musicians in Brazil who performed live on their social media, such as Xand do Avião and Jorge & Mateus.

In the recording, Mandetta told them that the “show can’t stop”, but the crowds can. Meanwhile, to people close to him, the Minister reacted to Bolsonaro’s complaints. He said he would not accept threats, and that if Bolsonaro had something to do, that he should act, that he should dismiss him.

And he reiterated his speech made last week when he was asked if he would leave office: “Doctors do not abandon patients”.

After a full day of rumors and a number of meetings, including with Bolsonaro and his team of Ministers, Mandetta surfaced to address the press after 8 PM on Monday night.

Speaking at the headquarters of the Ministry of Health in Brasília, and in yet another sign of a crisis within the Planalto that is taking on a surreal tone during the pandemic, he conceded that several of his officials were already clearing out desk drawers, ready to leave, including his own.

And he sent a message: “We will persevere because by persevering we will be able to fight our enemy, who has a name and surname: Covid-19”.

The former federal deputy’s haughtiness stemmed from the support he had received throughout the day and last week. The President of the National Congress, Senator Davi Alcolumbre, conveyed the following message to Bolsonaro through General Luiz Eduardo Ramos, Minister of Government and Walter Braga Netto, President’s Chief of Staff: “Congress is against the removal of Mandetta. This would damage the relationship with Congress”.

Summoned to speak personally with the President, Alcolumbre warned that he would not meet him and that the discussion was above partisan issues. Mandetta is affiliated to Alcolumbre’s political party DEM (Democrats), under which he was elected to two terms as a federal deputy for Mato Grosso do Sul.

However, the most intense pressure came from the military days earlier. Last Thursday night, four generals sitting on the Planalto met with Bolsonaro shortly after he granted a controversial interview to Jovem Pan radio, in which he said Mandetta lacked humility and that he (Mandetta) should listen to him (Bolsonaro) more.

The quartet told Bolsonaro that he should be silent so as not to make the health and economic crisis even more severe. They asked him not to interfere with his team for the time being. Nor, they warned, should he taunt governors and mayors who have decreed quarantines. They said that if he did not change his stance, he could be pressured to leave office.

At first, it seemed that the President had heard the warnings and heeded the advice. But the statements on Sunday and the signals on Monday showed that this was not the case.

According to an official who was at the meeting with the military on Thursday, it was not at all clear whether Bolsonaro expected such an adverse reaction to the Minister’s ourfall, and from so many coordinated fronts,

The core of discord between the chief and subordinate is the fact that the Minister favors social distancing, with measures that include the isolation of the largest number of people in cities where the disease is spreading.

The President, for his part, maintains that only the most vulnerable groups, i.e. the elderly and people with comorbidities, should be isolated. Bolsonaro is concerned about the effects of an inevitable economic downturn, the spending that the government will require to aid the impoverished population and, most strongly, his own prospects of reelection in the midst of an unprecedented crisis.

Mandetta’s potential replacement, Osmar Terra, is the person who has helped to make things more difficult for the Minister. A federal deputy for the MDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement) party in Rio Grande do Sul, and dismissed by Bolsonaro from the Ministry of Citizenship in February, he rejects the relevance of social distancing as an action to curb the massive spread of the coronavirus, siding with the President.

Over the weekend, he fought hard against his former fellow deputy. He took part in meetings between Bolsonaro and doctors who are against horizontal isolation, published an article in a newspaper and gave interviews to say that quarantine does not help control the Covid-19 pandemic — something that is refuted by the world’s leading health authorities.

On his social media, Terra was sanctioned by Twitter when he said the “quarantine increases coronavirus cases”. In an interview he granted by videoconference, to the National Critical Care website ‘Crítica Nacional’, he said that in Brazil not even 5,000 people will die.

He mistakenly said that the isolation measures have not worked anywhere in the world and complained about the quarantines in the country. “These drastic measures do not do any good. Not one person more or less will be hospitalized because of quarantine. Not one person more or less will die because of quarantine. It doesn’t get in the way of the virus,” she said.

In a group of DEM deputies, Mandetta called the MDB deputy “Osmar Darkness”. “Let’s follow science, discipline, planning, focus. Those background noises, that guy said this, the other guy said that, forget it. Despite everything, focus!” the Minister said in a press conference on Monday evening.

This was not the first stressful day for Mandetta. Nor should it be the last until the end of the pandemic crisis. “Unfortunately we started the week with another bump. I hope we will be able to have a period of peace from now on,” he said.

Source: El País