Andre Borges AP
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has fired Luiz Henrique Mandetta as minister of health, Mandetta said on Twitter Thursday afternoon. The two officials had sparred publicly in recent weeks over the need for social distancing to fight Latin America’s largest coronavirus outbreak.
“I just received notice from President Jair Bolsonaro of my resignation from the Ministry of Health,” Mandetta tweeted. “I want to thank you for the opportunity I was given, to lead our [public health system], to launch a plan to better the health of Brazilians and to plan the combat of the coronavirus pandemic, this great challenge that our health system faces. … I wish my replacement success in his role as minister of health.”
Brazil has reported more than 29,000 cases and more than 1,760 deaths from covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, numbers second only to the United States in the Western Hemisphere. Given Brazil’s sharply limited testing, actual cases and deaths are believed to be significant undercounts.
But much of the country’s focus in recent days was on the widespread speculation that Bolsonaro was about to fire Mandetta, after the minister criticized the president on a popular news show for refusing to abide by the ministry’s social distancing guidelines.
A replacement was not immediately named.
[Brazil’s Bolsonaro, channeling Trump, dismisses coronavirus measures — it’s just ‘a little cold’]
The move comes as packed hospitals and clinics teeter on the brink of collapse. Emergency rooms in Amazonas state are running at capacity, with 95 percent of intensive care beds and ventilators occupied. Rio de Janeiro’s famed Maracana soccer stadium has been converted to a makeshift hospital to accommodate coronavirus patients. Gravediggers in the country’s largest cemeteries are working overtime to bury the dead.
In the Western Hemisphere, Brazil trails only the United States in confirmed cases of the virus. But Bolsonaro has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the outbreak — dismissing the virus as a “little flu,” shrugging off social distancing recommendations from the World Health Organization and sharing videos calling for an end to the country’s lockdown.
His push to restart the economy set up a direct confrontation with Mandetta, who became a voice of resistance within the administration. A physician who has served in Brazil’s congress since 2010, Mandetta insisted that businesses shut down and people stay home to reduce the spread of the virus.
Bolsonaro largely ignored those calls. On a visit with Mandetta last weekend to a pop-up hospital outside Brasilia, he walked into a crowd, took off his mask, extended his hand for a supporter to kiss and autographed jerseys.
It was too much for the minister.
“Brazilians don’t know whether they should listen to their health minister or to their president,” Mandetta told the Globo news program Fantástico on Sunday.
Rahel Patrasso
Reuters
Supporters of Bolsonaro protest the social distancing recommendations of São Paulo state governor João Doria. The banner reads, “We demand the opening of the market.”
Those who think relations between President Trump and infectious-diseases chief Anthony S. Fauci are awkward might wanted to consider Bolsonaro and Mandetta.
Mandetta clearly and consistently walked back Bolsonaro’s erroneous claims on covid-19 with science and data. When deaths began to soar, Bolsonaro said the virus appeared to be going away; Mandetta warned of “tough days” ahead. When Bolsonaro touted an unproven cure for the virus — “This medicine here, hydroxychloroquine, is working everywhere,” he claimed in a video on Facebook and Twitter — Mandetta said he would not endorse widespread use of the drug without a peer-reviewed study. (Facebook and Twitter removed the videos.)
[Brazil’s densely packed favelas brace for coronavirus: ‘It will kill a lot of people’]
The health minister’s insistence on facts and figures clashed with Bolsonaro’s freewheeling approach, which often involves impromptu social media provocations with misinformation and conspiracy theories.
“Bolsonaro’s style has never been tied to facts,” said Anya Prusa, a senior associate at the Wilson Center’s Brazil Institute. “He prefers a more informal, off-the-cuff engagement. It is a style that served him well during the election, but it has not served him well as a leader.”
Bolsonaro’s approval ratings have fallen to a record low of 28 percent during the outbreak, according to an XP Investments poll published last week. Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed, in contrast, said Mandetta and his Health Ministry were doing a good or excellent job.
Those numbers weren’t lost on Bolsonaro, who said he wouldn’t hesitate to fire any members of his cabinet who “became stars.”
Ueslei Marcelino
Reuters
Mandetta reacts during a news conference in Brasilia on Wednesday.
When speculation surfaced last week that Bolsonaro was ready to fire Mandetta, Brazilians protested from quarantine, banging pots and pans from their windows. Mandetta called a news conference Monday to announce that he was still on the job. But on Tuesday, he reportedly told his team that he expected to be dismissed by the end of the week.
Bolsonaro’s political rivals, meanwhile, have urged the people to ignore him.
“Don’t follow the guidelines of the president of the republic,” said João Doria, governor of São Paulo state. “He does not lead the population correctly and unfortunately does not lead Brazil in the fight against the coronavirus and in the preservation of life.”
Doria, a former Bolsonaro ally, called for a strict lockdown in his state, Brazil’s most populous, this month.
[Public health experts: Coronavirus could overwhelm the developing world]
Some critics said Bolsonaro’s opposition to Mandetta was strategic. By positioning himself as the health minister’s rival and a champion for the economy, he was shielding himself from the blame for the inevitable recession that will follow the country’s lockdown.
“For Bolsonaro, the facts don’t matter. What matters is the narrative he constructs,” said Guilherme Casarões, a political scientist at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, a university in São Paulo.
“The political narrative here is convenient because it transfers responsibility for the crisis and the economic collapse to other operatives,” Casarões said. “He can shrug off responsibility while he casts himself as the person who tried, against the will of the system, the governors and the media, to keep the economy going.”
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2020-04-16 20:11:32Z
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