Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro looks on during a ceremony at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil, June 29, 2021. REUTERS/Adriano Machado
RIO DE JANEIRO, July 10 (Reuters) - For the first time, a majority of Brazilians support impeaching President Jair Bolsonaro, according to a poll released on Saturday, as serious graft allegations related to vaccine procurement hit the right-wing leader's already battered image.
According to the survey by Datafolha, 54% of Brazilians support a proposed move by the country's lower house to open impeachment proceedings against Bolsonaro, while 42% oppose it. In the last Datafolha survey on the issue, released in May, supporters and opponents of impeachment were essentially tied.
In a separate Datafolha poll, released on Thursday, 51% of Brazilians said they disapproved of Bolsonaro, the highest figure since he took office in January 2019.
In recent weeks, Brasilia has been rocked by allegations that federal officials solicited bribes to fast-track and overpay for the Covaxin vaccine developed by India's Bharat Biotech. In late June, Brazil's Health Ministry suspended the 1.6 billion-real ($304 million) procurement deal.
A Health Ministry official and a congressman have said they shared their concerns about the Covaxin deal with Bolsonaro, but that no action appeared to have been taken. Last week, a Supreme Court judge authorized an investigation into the president for dereliction of duty.
In a radio interview on Saturday, Bolsonaro said he had taken measures after the officials shared their concerns about the Covaxin deal, but he did not elaborate further.
"I meet with 100 people per month about the most varied topics imaginable," he told Radio Gaucha in southern Brazil. "I took measures in this case."
In addition to the vaccine scandal, uncovered amid an ongoing Senate investigation, a pair of deadly coronavirus waves this year have chipped away at the popularity of the former army captain, who has consistently downplayed the pandemic's severity and sown doubts about the safety of vaccines.
Datafolha surveyed 2,074 Brazilians face-to-face on July 7 and 8. The poll has a margin of error of 2 percentage points, meaning results could vary by that much either way.
Reporting by Gram Slattery in Rio de Janeiro and Eduardo Simões in Sao Paulo; editing by Jonathan Oatis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
cambeiu on July 10th, 2021 at 21:36 UTC »
As long as Bolsonaro has something he can barter with Congress (e.g. discretionary budget and key government positions), he will not be impeached.
Many non-Brazilian redditors think Bolsonaro is some kind of all powerful dictator or strongman, when in reality despite his autocratic personality, he is incredibly weak politically. Since the new Brazilian constitution was drafted in1988 after the end of the military dictatorship, the powers of the executive branch have been severely curtailed and it is now arguably the weakest of all the branches of the government.
Bolsonaro himself is an inept politician who spent most of his inexpressive political career in the lower house. He got elected as a "meme" candidate because people were fed up with the status quo.He does not know how to make alliances and build coalitions. His administration went thru 16 ministers in 2.5 years, a record in Brazilian history. He pissed off his own party and was expelled. He is currently without party as no existing party wants him. He has virtually alienated most of his past allies and now he is backed only by a cradle of sycophants. Even the vice-president, an Army general, does not talk to him anymore.
Early this year, he tried to rally the military and imply that he could do a coup, in order to try to intimidate Congress and the judiciary, but all he achieved was to have the Minister of Defense and all joint chiefs of staff to resign in unison in protest, in a clear signal to the entire country that the military would not back him in any coup attempt.
Right now he is giving away key position in his administration to other parties in exchange for delaying impeachment procedures. He is virtually hostage of Congress and they are squeezing every concession out of him in exchange for his political survival.His environment minister, who is under criminal investigation by the Brazilian Federal police, has just resigned.
The only reason Bolsonaro has not been criminals indicted yet is due to the fact that he is president. Once he is out of office, he will face an avalanche of criminal charges and he knows this. So he will barter out everything he can to avoid being impeached.
Ares1935 on July 10th, 2021 at 20:57 UTC »
54% support impeachment, and only 51% disapprove of him?
ok then...
urutau_ on July 10th, 2021 at 20:22 UTC »
"The minority must bow to the majority."
-- Jair Bolsonaro (2018)