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Bolsonaro sparks crisis after golden shower tweet
In today’s issue: Bolsonaro sparks crisis after golden shower tweet.
Bolsonaro sparks crisis after golden shower tweet
As Brazilians emerged from four days of intense Carnival parties, the country was dominated by one curious subject: golden showers. That’s because, on his official Twitter page, President Jair Bolsonaro shared a lewd video, shot during a Carnival street party, of one man masturbating—then being urinated on—supposedly to “denounce” the debauchery of Carnival. Then, confused about the response to his post, he asked his followers: “what is a golden shower?” It certainly backfired, becoming the latest case of self-inflicted political controversy in the Bolsonaro administration.
Respected legal scholars (even some more ideologically aligned with the president) said Jair Bolsonaro breached the decorum of his office, technically an impeachable offense. That won’t happen, of course, but the administration has come out of this looking very bad indeed, as the case made international headlines and turned Mr. Bolsonaro into a laughing stock. At a time when economic expectations around Brazil have become less optimistic—and the government has the challenge of passing a harsh pension reform—such episodes only undermine the administration’s credibility.
Brazilians joke that the year only properly starts at the end of Carnival. And this “New Year” showed the patience of market operators is growing thin. The U.S. dollar jumped 1.46%—making the Brazilian Real performance yesterday only better than that of the Argentine Peso. In just half a day, the São Paulo stock exchange (which opens at noon on Ash Wednesday) was down 0.41%, continuing a negative trend registered over the past week.
Tourism Minister directly accused in corruption affair
New developments in the dummy candidacy scandal surrounding the president’s Social Liberal Party (PSL) could claim the job of another Bolsonaro cabinet minister. A party member that ran for state lawmaker in October 2018 claims the current Tourism Minister, Marcelo Antônio, personally asked her to be a fake candidate. She was allegedly invited to help the party meet its quota of female candidates—but was expected to return the money her campaign received from the publicly-financed electoral fund back to the party.
The woman had already registered a complaint with the electoral courts in September, but received only an automatic response. The cabinet member says he “doesn’t remember” the encounters described by the woman. Since February, Mr. Antônio is battling accusations of using this rather common scheme to embezzle campaign funds—but this is the first time someone directly accused him. Dummy candidates are used as a way to funnel public money to companies connected to party leaders.
It’s a lose-lose situation for the administration: if Mr. Antônio is kept around, it could undermine the government’s anti-corruption discourse; if he’s ditched, the president could lose political support—as congressmen don’t react well to being thrown under the bus—even when they are in the wrong.
Remember:The PSL dummy candidate scanda
Brazilian women take lead in financial decisions
According to a map by UBS Investor Watch, Brazilian women are in the driving seat when it comes to making household financial decisions—despite lingering gender-based inequality in multiple levels of Brazilian society. The Swiss investment group conducted a study between 2017 and 2019 into nine economies, investigating who makes investment decisions at home. Brazilian and Mexican women are those most likely to take the lead.
Women heard for this survey generally put retirement pensions atop their list of concerns. “It is particularly surprising that Brazilian women figure among those who least delegate to their husbands the management of their net worth—which goes against the perception of the Latin American culture as being more sexist,” says UBS Brazil President Sylvia Coutinho.
What else you need to know today
Infrastructure. The federal government plans to privatize all 42 Brazilian airports still run by state-owned company Infraero. The privatization will be split into two rounds—one in 2020 and the rest by 2022. São Paulo’s Congonhas and Rio’s Santos Dumont airports will be the last ones to be auctioned, as Infraero depends on them to finance itself. The auctions will make most of Infraero’s 8,000 jobs redundant.
Corruption. After spotting message exchanges between Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes and Operation Car Wash defendants, the Federal Prosecution Office asked for the justice to be removed from cases connected to former Senator Aloysio Nunes and Paulo Vieira de Souza, believed to be a money launderer for Mr. Nunes’ party, PSDB. Mr. Souza was recently convicted in two corruption cases, for a combined 172 years in prison.
Technology. During the 2019 Carnival, a man wanted for murder was spotted among the crowd in Salvador and arrested, thanks to the police’s use of facial recognition software. The suspect was dressed up as a woman, wearing makeup, a wig, and a hat—yet the system still pointed out a 94% similarity to a mugshot in the police archives.
Vale. Despite taking leave after a recommendation from the Federal Prosecution Office, Vale CEO Fabio Schvartsman defended, in a letter to the company’s board, that he should remain ahead of the company. It would be “the most effective way” to deal with the crisis following the Brumadinho dam collapse—which killed at least 182 people.
Accord. The Swiss parliament approved yesterday an accord to end double taxation on income between Brazil and Switzerland. A deal was brewing after Brazil took the European country off a ‘blacklist’ of tax havens. Both countries expect the accord will boost trade relations between the two economies.[/restricted]
The post Bolsonaro sparks crisis after golden shower tweet appeared first on The Brazilian Report.
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