President-elect Bolsonaro targets ‘lying’ press
SAO PAULO: Brazilian presidentelect Jair Bolsonaro has revisited his most contentious campaign promises, calling for looser gun laws, urging SERGIO Moro, A High-proile anti-corruption judge to join his government and promising to cut government advertising for media that “lie.”
Bolsonaro said he would nominate him to the Supreme Court. The next vacancy on the court is expected in 2020. Moro did not respond to requests for comment.
But Ascanio Seleme, editor in chief for the O Globo newspaper, wrote in a Tuesday blog post on the publication’s website that Moro should not accept the offer to become justice minister.
He has too much work to do on pending corruption trials, Seleme wrote.
Seleme added it would also bolster accusations from the Workers Party (PT), whose candidate Fernando Haddad lost to Bolsonaro in Sunday’s vote, that Moro has a vendetta against the PT and worked to keep it from power.
The Globo newspaper, in a separate article citing unnamed sources close to the judge, reported on Tuesday that Moro was weighing Bolsonaro’s offer, feeling that he could reassure citizens concerned the president-elect will not govern democratically.
Late on Monday, Bolsonaro said in an interview with Globo TV that he would cut government advertising funds that low to Any “lying” MEDIA outlets.
During his campaign, the right-winger imitated US President Donald Trump’s strategy of aggressively confronting the media. In particular, he took aim at Globo TV and especially Brazil’s biggest newspaper, the Folha de S.paulo.
“I am totally in favour of freedom of the press,” Bolsonaro told Globo TV. “But if it’s up to me, press that shamelessly lies will not have any government support.”
Bolsonaro was referring to the hundreds of millions of reais the Brazilian government spends in advertising each year in local media outlets, mainly for promotions of state-run irms.
The UOL news portal, owned by the Grupo Folha, which also controls the Folha de S.paulo newspaper, used Brazil’s freedom of information act as the basis for a 2015 article that showed Globo received 565 million reais in federal government spending in 2014. Folha got 14.6 million reais that year.
The federal government’s secretariat for communication, which tracks the igures, DID not IMMEDIATELY reply for a request on how much money the government has spent on media advertising since 2014.