RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 13, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Brazil is going through a
rudderless period as President Jair Bolsonaro lies in a hospital bed
following stomach surgery, with high-priority political issues such as
pension reform on the backburner until he recovers, analysts and observers
say.
The limbo, which has lasted more than two weeks, might finally be coming
to an end this week, according to reports.
But it has exposed tensions and jockeying for power within his young
government, which took office at the beginning of January — including
notably between Bolsonaro and his vice president, Hamilton Mourao, who
briefly served as acting leader.
“Do you want to kill me?” Bolsonaro asked Mourao in a telephone call at
the weekend, the latter said, making clear the president was joking,
according to multiple reports in major Brazilian media.
Political observers in Brazil, however, perceived that as just the latest
in a series of growing signs of disunity and of a troubling absence of
leadership in Latin America’s biggest economy.
“There is a kind of power vacuum in these weeks with the president’s
lengthening absence while in hospital,” one political analyst, Thomaz Favaro,
with the political risk consultancy Control Risks, told AFP.
There was “a bit of worry” among hundreds of officials appointed to run
government ministries, agencies and state-run companies on how to implement
Bolsonaro’s agenda, Favaro said.
Bolsonaro, 63, has been out of action since a January 28 operation to
remove a colostomy bag and seal intestines perforated in September 2018 by a
lone assailant who stabbed him while he was campaigning.
His recovery has taken longer than expected. But Bolsonaro insists he is
keeping up with his duties from his hospital bed.
– Ailing ‘captain’ –
A far-right former paratrooper who sees himself as the “captain” of his
government and country, Bolsonaro has been in office for just over six weeks.
In hospital, he has sought to project an image of a leader still at the
helm despite being weakened, drip-fed nutrients and with restricted visitor
access. On social media, he comments on various political issues, and posts
pictures of meetings with his officials wearing face masks for hygiene.
His spokesman has spoken daily of the president’s improving health — even
as the president’s expected discharge date was pushed back repeatedly because
of vomiting, fluid build-up and then a bout of pneumonia.
Bolsonaro is now deemed medically well enough to be released from hospital
from Wednesday, but the decision rests with the presidency, his chief surgeon
Antonio Luiz Macedo told the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper.
When he does get out, Bolsonaro will have two priorities to tackle:
setting out the contours of a much-anticipated reform of Brazil’s
unsustainable pension system — and re-imposing his authority on a government
riven by headstrong officials.
Chief among the latter is Mourao, a retired general who is said by
Brazilian political columnists to have irritated Bolsonaro’s entourage —
especially his sons, three of whom are also politicians — by expanding his
power base and influence through meetings with congressional heavyweights and
diplomats and comments to the media.
The vice president particularly enraged them by publicly questioning the
anti-crime justification of a decree Bolsonaro signed to ease gun ownership
laws, and Bolsonaro’s controversial promise to eventually move Brazil’s
embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
The question Bolsonaro shot Mourao on Saturday was seen to stem from that
friction.
The Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper lamented the “administrative paralysis”
caused by Bolsonaro’s extended hospitalization and what it saw as his sons’
undue influence.
“The government today is run by someone not in sufficient health to do so,
and who suffers direct and broad influence from his sons — who received no
vote to be president nor occupy any ministerial posts,” it said in an
editorial.
– Struggle over pension changes –
The pension issue promises further struggles behind the scenes.
Bolsonaro won office partly by wooing investors with a pledge to overhaul
of Brazil’s limping, protectionist economy. That task has been largely
delegated to his economy minister, Paulo Guedes, a US-trained free-marketeer.
Guedes has publicly toed the line set by Bolsonaro. But rumors of tensions
between him and the president’s chief of staff, Onyx Lorenzoni, have not been
dissipated by ostentatious pictures of the two lunching together.
And Guedes and Bolsonaro have differed on basic principles of the pension
reform. Lorenzoni said the package would be unveiled at the end of this week
before being sent to Congress, but only after Bolsonaro gave his green light.
According to a leak last week of an early draft proposal, the minimum
retirement age would be hiked to 65 years for both men and women. Bolsonaro
initially wanted a softer regime of 62 years for men and 57 for women, but is
said to be ready to settle for 65 and 60 respectively.
Guedes was to receive a finalized proposal Tuesday.
The reform will require changes to Brazil’s constitution, to be voted by a
congressional supermajority. If it is passed, it is expected to yield savings
of up to one trillion reais ($273 billion) over a decade, according to
Guedes.
Currently in Brazil, workers can make early retirement after contributing
for 35 years in the case of men and 30 years for women.