With Weintraub Resigning Imminent, Bolsonaro Seeks ‘Honorable Discharge’ for Minister

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – After  Abraham Weintraub‘s involvement in the protests in favor of Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday, June 14th, some members of the government told Federal Supreme Court (STF) justices that the Minister of Education could be dismissed in a gesture of peace to the Court.

In parallel, President Jair Bolsonaro is said to be looking for an honorable discharge for his Education Minister, such as a position in the Planalto or a diplomatic post abroad.

On Sunday, without mentioning the Court’s justices, Weintraub once again used the adjective “thugs”, a term he used in reference to the Supreme Court’s magistrates at an April 22nd cabinet meeting.

The message about Weintraub’s departure was delivered to the STF by Ministers close to the President. Since last month, both the military leaders and the technical wing of the government have been trying to persuade Bolsonaro that Weintraub’s removal was necessary to cool the belligerent climate between the executive and legislative branches and are seeking a solution in this regard.

According to presidential advisors, Bolsonaro does not want the Minister to leave the government and is looking for an honorable solution for Weintraub, who has achieved great popularity among the most loyal ideological supporters of Bolsonarism.

The options assessed by Bolsonaro are either to move Weintraub to a special advisory position, where he would remain close to the President and work with his (Weintraub’s) brother Arthur, or to place him in charge of a diplomatic post abroad.

Concurrently, the President has asked members of Congress to propose names for the portfolio. Bolsonaro fears that Weintraub’s departure from Education will not be well regarded by his support base and therefore wants a name with a similar ideological line to the current Minister.

For presidential aides, Weintraub’s permanence in charge of Education undermines the government. However, they believe that the President is struggling to dismiss him because of the Minister’s friendship with his sons, particularly Eduardo and Carlos. Thus, they believe that the President could still change his mind.

Bolsonaro’s allies say they believe that Weintraub knows that his story will not end well at the STF and, since little can be done, he has chosen to be loud so that, in being convicted, he will be viewed as a martyr of the Bolsonarist ideological cause, thereby creating the narrative that he is yet another victim of the Supreme Court.

In the STF, Justices say that if the Minister persists in provoking the constitutional Powers, he will end up in prison.

However, even in the legislature, the Planalto’s message is viewed with skepticism. For a month now, the Congress and Centrão deputies have been pressing for Weintraub’s removal.

Until the release of the April 22nd cabinet meeting video, in which the Minister insults the members of the STF as thugs and says they should be arrested, Bolsonaro was determined to fire him, according to legislators and sources of the government’s legal department who were trying to settle for Weintraub’s removal as a gesture of peace to the Supreme Court.

The cabinet meeting video and the subsequent summons for a deposition by Justice Alexandre de Moraes, however, gave the Minister of Education a chance of survival. Weintraub gained more supporters among bolsonarism’s most loyal base. If he were to dismiss the Minister and yield to the STF, the President would raise a serious problem with some of his voters, his allies say.

Since then, sources from the judiciary have been discussing a solution with Bolsonaro’s allies.

In an interview with CNN Brasil, Jorge de Oliveira, Minister of the General Secretariat of the Presidency, compared Weintraub’s statements to those made by STF Justice Celso de Mello, who compared Bolsonaro to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in a message to colleagues that eventually became public.

However, he said that the Minister of Education should be punished in case he crossed the line by publicly reiterating on Sunday his criticism of the STF justices during the April 22nd cabinet meeting.

“Minister Abraham is, in my opinion, completely free to express himself as he wishes, and whatever he may have exceeded, anything that the legislation may consider as slander, libel, if any, [then] he should be punished for it,” Oliveira said.

However, Abraham Weintraub isn’t the only Minister now being criticized. The President’s immediate entourage also began pointing to the head of the AGU (Solicitor General of Brazil), José Levi, in office since April 29th. Faced with a string of government defeats in court, criticism regarding the slowness of the Solicitor General began to be voiced.

Source: Folhapress