Happy Friday! Today: a new, more potent coronavirus variant. The termination of the emergency salary. The final act in the Covid hearings committee. And the Central Bank’s anti-inflation quest.
🚨 Breaking: Feds arrest Bolsonaro ally
Federal Police launched an operation this morning to arrest former Congressman Roberto Jefferson.
Who is he? The infamous politician was a key ally of impeached President Fernando Collor in the early 1990s and was at the center of a 2005 scandal which nearly brought down the Lula administration. The government had been systematically bribing lawmakers to achieve a Congressional majority – something Roberto Jefferson exposed in retaliation for being accused of corruption in a separate case. Multiple politicians were arrested, including himself.
- In recent years, he reinvented himself as a harcore Bolsonaro ally, advocating a military coup with the president at the helm. It is this that has led to his arrest.
Why it matters. Mr. Jefferson is the big dog in the Brazilian Labor Party (PTB), which could be Jair Bolsonaro’s vehicle of choice in the 2022 election.
- The arrest order might also suggest that the Supreme Court has indeed decided to go to war against the Bolsonaro camp.