Happy Monday! Covaxin drama has the Bolsonaro government reeling. Tensions simmer between truckers and the government, but major national strike is unlikely.
How the Covaxin scandal affects Bolsonaro’s re-election
One week ago, it appeared that the Senate’s hearings committee into the government’s pandemic response was running out of steam. Now, perhaps for the first time since work began, it has put the Jair Bolsonaro administration on the ropes and threatens its stability.
Context. On Friday, Congressman Luis Miranda and his senior Health Ministry official brother Luis Roberto Miranda detailed the “abnormal” pressure put on the latter to greenlight a USD 300 million contract to buy 20 million Covaxin vaccines. They named government whip Ricardo Barros as the source of that pressure.
- Not only were negotiations fast-tracked in spite of doubts around the vaccine’s efficacy and quality controls, but Covaxin’s representative in Brazil — a company named Precisa Medicamentos — is owned by shady lobbyists with an extensive history of judicial complaints against them.
- Since Mr. Bolsonaro took office in 2019, Precisa has seen a 6,000-percent increase in its value of government contracts.
- Congressman Miranda says he warned Mr. Bolsonaro about the issues concerning the Covaxin deal, and...