San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Justice leader latest to resign in major rebuke to president
RIO DE JANEIRO — President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil was struggling to govern effectively long before the explosive resignation speech of his star Cabinet minister, who basically called his soontobe former boss a criminal.
Bolsonaro became a president without a political party in November, after falling out with leaders of the Social Liberal Party, which had backed his presidential bid.
Several political allies — including two of Bolsonaro’s sons — are under investigation in criminal and legislative inquiries. They include suspected moneylaundering schemes and defamatory disinformation campaigns waged online.
Given those challenges, the dramatic exit of Justice Minister Sergio Moro on Friday was seen by critics and supporters of the president as a potentially destructive blow to his grip on power as his second year in office gets under way amid the coronavirus pandemic and a recession.
Moro was the eighth minister to leave Bolsonaro’s Cabinet during the 15 months he has been in office.
Moro, a former federal judge who became the most iconic figure of an anticorruption crusade that sparked hope across Latin America in recent years, resigned in protest after Bolsonaro fired the federal police chief, Maurício Valeixo.
In an extraordinary televised address delivered Friday from the Justice Ministry in Brasília, the capital, Moro said Bolsonaro intended to appoint a new police head that would do his political bidding by keeping him abreast of investigations and compiling intelligence dossiers at the president’s request.
Bolsonaro intends to appoint Alexandre Ramagem, the current head of Brazil’s intelligence agency, as the new police chief, according to reports in the Brazilian press. Ramagem was Bolsonaro’s head of security during his presidential campaign.
Moro’s accusation prompted Attorney General Augusto Aras to ask the Supreme Court to open a criminal investigation into the conduct Moro had described, saying that if confirmed, it amounted to obstruction of justice and other crimes.