Last November, Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro announced that all of the country’s federal civil servants would receive a small pay raise in 2022. “It isn’t what they deserve,” the president declared, “but it’s what we can afford to give them.” However, being announced less than one year before the general elections, Mr. Bolsonaro’s move raised eyebrows.
The opposition questioned the president’s motives, with the chair of the center-left Workers’ Party Gleisi Hoffman calling the pay rise “a political act by someone who has always been against federal employees.”
Since the president’s promise, however, budgetary realities have set...
