August 27, 2021

11:08

Cassandra Castro – from Cenarium Magazine

BRASILIA – Brazil is facing two pandemics, one is the new coronavirus and the other is the politicization of the health crisis. The first one has led to collapse of the health system and hundreds of thousands of deaths. The second is the political, electoral, and ideological dispute between rulers who, instead of working for the collective welfare, are dedicated to seeking more power for themselves. For analysts interviewed by CENARIUM, the political scenario in the country results in disorganization and delays measures that can protect the population.

For the political scientist and journalist, Tiago Monteiro Tavares, the divergences that have arisen between mayors, governors and the Executive have only worsened the situation and delayed the measures to combat Covid-19. With the decision of the Supreme Court (STF) that governments and municipalities have autonomy to act, a political and ideological dispute with the federal government was declared. “President Jair Bolsonaro took this (the STF decision) as an excuse to throw responsibility in the lap of mayors and governors and claimed he could do nothing more”, he said.

“This is a dumb polarization that diminishes the country”, Thiago Monteiro Tavares, political scientist and journalist.

In the expert’s view, this scenario warms up the electoral dispute because all mayors and governors are eligible to run in 2022. For him, during the pandemic a greater focus was given to the municipal and state administrations due to the movement in search of equipment, setting up campaign hospitals and structure for vaccination. People started to observe more the posture of the local, state, and federal Chief Executive Officers. “This also generated an awakening, a little more political awareness of the consequences of voting,” he said.

Tiago Tavares also draws attention to another detail: the current tumultuous political situation aggravates even more the situation of confronting the pandemic because it ends up taking the focus off what is really of interest to the community: generating jobs and immunizing the population. Amid the approval of the Electoral Fund of almost R$ 6 billion and the negotiation of positions between members of the block of parties known as Centrão, he believes that President Bolsonaro decided to “hand over the rest of the entire government to Centrão to try to survive. The Centrão will try to make the most of the public coffers and the positions they can occupy. All this movement will make people even more horrified with this huge expense in politics and the decrease of resources with the pandemic,” he emphasizes.

The political scientist affirms that all this context can bring an opportunity for transition regarding the way Brazilians vote. “We have a cultural rooting of the so-called halter vote, the sold vote, but people are, little by little, questioning ideas and exercising the so-called opinion vote, which is volatile. This type of vote will have an even greater weight, the so-called decisive voter,” he explains.

But Tiago Tavares makes a worrisome alert about what he believes to be a harmful effect generated by the political polarization of the pandemic. “Political polarization is very bad, the fight between Petistas and Bolsonaristas can have terrible consequences, it could be the bloodiest election in history.” The political scientist believes that before there was only the polarization of ideas, of values, but now the level of the “fight” has gone way down. Another point is that Brazil’s image abroad will be, even more, scratched. “This is a dumb polarization that diminishes the country,” he emphasizes.

Game of interest

Sociologist and political scientist Antonio Flávio Testa sees in the current scenario of the pandemic in Brazil many interests at stake that are not necessarily those linked to the health and welfare of the population. “Brazil invested a lot of money in the construction of field hospitals, purchase of equipment, vaccines, but there was also a lot of detour of resources”, he says. In his opinion, the CPI of the pandemic was created more to persecute the president and prevented the investigation of the Northeast Consortium that includes very large accusations involving nine governors, for example.

“There is, in fact, an exaggerated politicization around the CPI and the pandemic issue”, Antonio Flávio Testa, sociologist and political scientist.

“There is, in fact, an exaggerated politicization around the CPI and the pandemic issue. Not only the initial discussion of early treatment, the use of chloroquine, behind this, in a very cold analysis, there is a market dispute, the purchase of respirators, companies that didn’t deliver the purchases and received an advance”, he reflects.

The specialist also sees the CPI as a great platform in a pre-election year. “We already know that at least seven senators are running for reelection and state governments. He also thinks that the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission has to investigate and not “fight and humiliate people”, he says.

While in the political sphere the concerns with the pandemic revolve around visibility and electoral dividends, the social side is, every day, more dramatic. “There are almost 30 million people unemployed, unemployable and 19 million going hungry, based on the hunger map published at the end of April. Inflation is increasing and government aid is decreasing”, reveals the sociologist.

He foresees a very difficult scenario that should start at the end of this year. “I believe that the federal government should start worrying about the after-effects of the pandemic, the psychological traumas, which have a negative impact on the economy. Vaccination started to advance in the country, but it was a political dispute, of interests, among the big laboratories”, he says.

Antonio Testa also evaluates that many prominent people used the pandemic to promote themselves. “The governor of São Paulo, João Dória, tried to ‘brand’ himself as the “father of the vaccine” and, instead of guiding the population, he generated even more panic, the so-called perverse effect,” he analyzes.

According to the specialist, more pandemics will come and the governments will have to prepare themselves to face new variants. “Brazil has to keep itself in a state of alert and the government has to put money in order to manufacture more vaccines, build more modern hospitals and equipment”, he says. Antonio Testa recalled the time when Brazil managed to become a world reference in the treatment for AIDS, a proof that the country is capable of making advances to guarantee more protection for everyone.