Impeachment talks gain steam in Brasília as Bolsonaro loses support

Despite Brazil being one of the worst-hit countries by the coronavirus — with over 8.5 million confirmed cases and 211,000 deaths — Jair Bolsonaro saw his approval ratings hit their highest level in the second half of 2020. As we explained on The Brazilian Report, this was thanks to the coronavirus emergency aid program, the biggest cash-transfer initiative in the country’s history, reaching 67 million people and driving poverty rates to their lowest levels in at least 16 years.

However, without the money to continue paying the emergency aid benefits and amid the healthcare collapse in the Amazon — laying bare the consequences of a lack of national coordination to fight the coronavirus — President Bolsonaro has seen his popularity take a tumble.

This trend began tentatively in September, when the government was forced to half monthly payments of coronavirus benefits, before scrapping the program completely in December. The shift became even more intense with the dramatic scenes in Manaus last week, where Covid-19 patients died from suffocation due to a shortage of oxygen tanks.

Now, one week on, talks of Jair Bolsonaro’s impeachment are once again brewing in the corridors of Brasília.

In fact, the topic of Mr. Bolsonaro’s impeachment has never been so widely discussed on social media in Brazil. Since the president began his term on January 1, 2019, some 54,000 posts have been made on Facebook including the words “impeachment” and...