Photographer: Andressa Anholete/Bloomberg
BY OLIVER STUENKEL
APRIL 27, 2021
The inquiry probably won’t bring down the president, but it has the potential to reduce his chances to win reelection next year.
SÃO PAULO – Throughout the past year, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro surprised critics by showing remarkable political resilience, shrugging off the resignation of two popular ministers, Brazil’s economic collapse and an out-of-control pandemic through a mix of diversionary tactics, authoritarian threats and increased public spending for the poorest. In February, two candidates backed by Bolsonaro won the top positions in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, and the president’s embrace of the powerful centrão parties’ coalition limited the risk of impeachment. The opposition was struggling and Bolsonaro seemed to be on track for reelection in 2022.
Since then, however, the mood has darkened in the presidential palace in Brasília. Not only has the Supreme Court annulled the convictions of ex-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but he now leads in the polls for next year’s presidential election. To complicate matters further, in early April a Supreme Court justice ordered the Senate to initiate the congressional inquiry — requested by opposition parties — into the federal government’s response to the pandemic. That committee is set to meet for the first time this week.
The outcome of such inquiries — known in Brazil by the Portuguese acronym CPI — is uncertain, and those who see it as a mortal threat to Bolsonaro’s presidency are likely to be disappointed. There are four reasons why the impact of the investigation may be limited.
First, while CPIs can endanger presidents — as was the case in 1992, when a committee hearing of then-President Fernando Collor’s right-hand man Paulo Cesar Farias effectively ended Collor’s presidency — they cannot initiate impeachment proceedings by themselves. Rather, if a commission’s final report points to a crime, the Prosecutor General Augusto Aras, a Bolsonaro stalwart, would have to take action. Alternatively, the Congress’s president could initiate an impeachment proceeding, an equally unlikely scenario at this stage. Since 1992, several presidents, including Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula,..
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