In today’s intensely polarized Brazil, political consensus is near impossible to come across. Education Minister Abraham Weintraub, however, has managed to attract criticism and calls for his head from all sides of the political spectrum. On Wednesday, a group of 26 representatives and two senators from ten different parties—including the far-left Socialism and Liberty Party to the right-wing Social Democracy Party—filed an impeachment request against the embattled cabinet minister.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was the government’s disastrous management of the National University Entrance Exam, or Enem. Lawmakers say that the minister committed an offense against public administration—which is not strictly a crime—by not complying with the goals laid out by the National Education Plan.
The Enem debacle
The problems began when the company that printed the exam’s tests and answer sheets went bankrupt in April 2019. Under Mr. Weintraub’s watch, the Education Ministry bypassed traditional bidding processes to hire a new contractor, choosing a firm with no prior experience in endeavors of this magnitude—more than 5 million students took the Enem last year—leading to a mix-up of answer sheets that affected the final grades of thousands of participants.
The government says the error affected less than 1 percent of tests and even floated...
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