Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro is deflecting all responsibility for the coronavirus crisis, casting blame on mayors, governors, an outgoing health minister and the media.
Since the outbreak started, the Brazilian leader has avoided acknowledging the potential effects of his actions, particularly in undermining local leaders’ stay-at-home recommendations. A rare exception came in mid-April, as Bolsonaro appointed a new health minister tasked with sparing the economy from the coronavirus.Less than two weeks later, as Brazil’s death toll blew past 5,000, he told reporters, “You’re not going to put on my lap this count that isn’t mine.
When governors defied Bolsonaro’s subsequent decree that gyms, barbershops and beauty salons be allowed to operate as essential services, he accused them of undermining the rule of law and suggested the move would invite “undesirable authoritarianism to emerge in Brazil.” Two health ministers have left office during the pandemic, making Brazil the world’s only nation that can claim such distinction, he said.
Trump would have to fire his government’s top expert on the virus and the expert’s successor, attend anti-pandemic rallies and expand chloroquine treatment “to approach the level of crisis incompetence” shown by Bolsonaro, Ian Bremmer, the president of political consultancy Eurasia Group, said on Twitter this month.
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