The President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, now stands in unsplendid isolation. Alone among the Heads of State and Government, he has gone off a tangent to the planet as it were by decrying restrictions and quarantines imposed by the country’s Governors, suggesting unproven remedies in the manner of a quack, even debunking social distancing.
In the net, there is a fair measure of dichotomy in Brazil. With much of the country shut down, he has isolated himself even within the Latin American country that he helms. In the midst of what has been rated by the UN as the worst humanitarian crisis ever since the Second World War, he has stoked yet another controversy and a year after the bushfires in the Amazon that the President is alleged to have ignited to facilitate industrialisation.
Indeed, Bolsonaro’s credibility in the perspective of the comity of nations has now hit the reefs, most particularly after his reference to coronavirus as a “measly cold”. Bolsonaro’s ascent was always spurious, and his record since assuming power last year ~ with attacks on human rights, minorities, the arts, and destruction of the Amazon ~ has been a disgrace to the presidential palace in Brasilia.
His response to coronavirus has plummeted new depths. As a law unto himself, his attitude to Covid- 19 goes beyond mistakes and complacency that are bound to happen in the moment of a catastrophe. Even former allies are said to be aghast at his behaviour. He has wrecked his country’s attempts to contain the spread of coronavirus and is increasingly being debunked as a “threat to Brazilians”.
President Bolsonaro’s latest statement on coronavirus throws all caution to the winds. He has repeatedly dismissed the illness as “just a little flu” or “a bit of a cold”, and as a media trick or fantasy. Having finally acknowledged its reality, he has told people to “face it like men, not kids. We’ll all die one day”, and has urged the country to “get back to normal”.
Such a consummation is easier imagined than accomplished. Irresponsible no less was his meeting with citizens last weekend, given his close contact with known coronavirus cases. The danger emanates not merely from the messages he has sent, but the physical risk he could pose to others.
The President’s behaviour is said to have alienated the political class; even former allies are balking at his behaviour in the midst of the global crisis. The rightwing chief of the pro-Bolsonaro state of Santa Catarina has declared that he was “flabbergasted” by the President’s stance. So too is the world. The withers of the President of Brazil remain unwrung.