'The ship is sinking': Bolsonaro battles to block foul-mouthed cabinet video

Source: The Guardian

'The ship is sinking': Bolsonaro battles to block foul-mouthed cabinet video

A partial transcript of the meeting in Brasília offers a glimpse of the paranoia and ideological obsessions of Brazil’s president

Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Fri 15 May 2020 18.29 BST
Last modified on Fri 15 May 2020 20.13 BST

The coronavirus pandemic has halted production of Brazil’s steamy telenovela soap operas – but one small-screen blockbuster is on everyone’s lips.

A two-hour video of a heated and expletive-ridden cabinet meeting chaired by President Jair Bolsonaro last month has become the subject of an extraordinary political arm-wrestle, exposing the intrigues and eccentricities at the centre of Brazilian power.

“This meeting is the perfect portrait of the Bolsonaro administration,” said Bruno Boghossian, a columnist for the Folha de São Paulo newspaper in Brazil’s political capital, Brasília.

“Conspiracy theories, ideological issues, made-up battles, and culture wars – all right there at the heart of government.”

The video of the supposedly private plenum on 22 April was unexpectedly thrust into the public domain by the resignation of Bolsonaro’s justice minister, Sergio Moro, two days later.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/15/jair-bolsonaro-video-cabinet-foul-mouthed