By Ingrid Fontes*

Most of the blame for Brazil’s inept response to the COVID‑19 pandemic – including the highest per capita death rate in the world (214 per 100,000) – falls squarely on the shoulders of President Jair Bolsonaro. Some of the severe criticism of the President – including some in an ongoing Senate investigation – is surely politically driven, but government foot-dragging and bad decisions, compounding the country’s political economy of corruption, have worsened the 15-month crisis.

• The country has recorded 16.2 million cases and 452,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University’s COVID‑19 Dashboard. Since early May, Brazil has had a moving average of more than 2,000 deaths per day.
• Vaccinations have lagged even though Brazil has a competent infrastructure for administering conventional flu shots. As of this week, Brazil has administered a total of 63.7 million doses, with nearly 14.74 percent of the population receiving at least one dose, and 7.15 percent receiving both doses (13.2 million) – out of a population of more than 212 million. That’s below Chile (41 percent fully vaccinated) and Uruguay (28 percent); more than Mexico (9 percent); and well ahead of Peru (3 percent) and Ecuador (3 percent), according to a tracking website.

Government efforts ran into some longstanding obstacles, but many problems directly resulted from Bolsonaro policies that, according to many observers and experts, were minimalist if not obstructionist.

• The country’s health system has long been underfunded, but the chaos has been the result of government actions. Four ministers of health have cycled through the job during the pandemic. The President and his administration have willfully disseminated information about the pandemic and vaccines, including that some shots will “turn you into a crocodile,” that have been roundly debunked. Bolsonaro has hosted large events without masks and social distancing.
• Initially calling COVID a “little flu,” the government failed to begin arranging the purchase of vaccines in mid-2020 and later refused several offers by Pfizer that would have guaranteed it millions of vaccines. It rejected a liability waiver that the United States, EU, UK, Japan, and other Latin American countries had accepted.
• The government also refused public calls to develop an immunization plan and delayed training healthcare professionals to administer the vaccine. When Brazil received its first batch of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines last month, the government stated it would distribute them to its 27 capitals in a “proportional and equal” division, but the lack of a detailed plan has led to wasted doses, shortages, and the suspension of vaccinations.

Corruption has also hampered efforts. Congress authorized US$50.8 billion in April 2020 and allowed all levels of government to purchase ventilators, intensive care beds, masks, and other supplies without bids and the usual bureaucratic review. By August, auditors were already warning that less than 8 percent of funds expended had gone directly to fight the disease. Of seven field hospitals the ex-governor of Rio de Janeiro ordered, five never opened. State and public prosecutors have already developed various cases of companies bilking more than US$70 million in each of various schemes. A lot of key equipment, such as respirators, and protective gear, never reached patients.

• The government was slow to crack down on scams, such as the sale of bogus cures, that stole citizens’ money and undermined their confidence. The resident of a luxury building in Belo Horizonte, for example, told police that both the nurse and vaccine he paid US$100 for turned out to be false.

Other Latin American countries have struggled with the pandemic, of course, but Brazil’s performance falls far short of what it could have achieved with effective leadership and transparency. The harm has been magnified by the country’s interconnected and problematic political economy, specifically corruption. which has created a perfect storm of government ineffectiveness.

• The President’s personal role is not to be underestimated, both in his deeds, such as undermining state and local governments’ efforts to contain the disease, and his inaction. Ironically, even communities that oppose Bolsonaro, or at least have no reason to heed him, have been heavily influenced by his example. Indigenous leaders report, for instance, that his refusal to accept the Chinese vaccine has contributed to vaccine hesitation among the 410,000 adults in indigenous villages. His rhetoric has made thousands of supporters refuse taking the vaccine.

* Ingrid Fontes is a student in the School of Public Affairs and School of International Service, with a particular focus on Brazil.

By Beatriz Rey*

The Brazilian Congress has been the leading force in combating the COVID‑19 pandemic and its disastrous impact on the Brazilian economy, made necessary by the disorganization of the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro in proposing and securing the approval of legislation. The President of the Chamber of Deputies, Rodrigo Maia, recently pointed out that, following a trend that predates Bolsonaro, no substantial vote would have occurred without legislators’ leadership.

• Political scientists have ranked Brazilian presidents as among the traditionally most powerful in the world. Unlike their U.S. counterparts, presidents in Brazil can initiate almost any type of bill in Congress, enabling them to be the dominant player behind major policy reforms. However, this pattern began to shift in the 2000s. Political scientist Acir Almeida has documented 2009 as the year in which Congress – for the first time ever – passed more legislation of its own drafting than that proposed by the presidency. In that Congressional session (2007-2010), 371 laws were legislator-sponsored – more than three times the 113 President-sponsored laws passed. The number of laws sponsored by the presidency dropped to 86 in the next Congressional session (2011-2014), compared to 297 by Congressmen. Between 2015 and 2018, lawmakers approved 369 of their own bills, while only 42 executive-sponsored bills became law. 

Congress has especially exerted leadership during the pandemic, during which the coronavirus has dominated the legislative agenda. (Almost half of the 133 bills that Congress passed last year were linked to the public health and economic impact of COVID‑19.) Legislators proposed 96 percent of the total 2,377 pandemic-related bills drafted. Bills initiated by the Legislative and the Executive branches experienced similar approval rates – roughly 47 percent of the Administration’s and 52 percent of the Congress’s – but all but one of the President’s laws were approved as provisional decrees, which are like executive orders in the United States. Executive decrees are arguably easier to pass than other bills. 

• The coronavirus emergency aid program was one of the legislator-sponsored bills. The country’s most important COVID-19 policy to deal with the economic consequences of the pandemic, its legal framework originated in a bill submitted by Congressman Eduardo Barbosa. The program’s approval also demonstrated Congressional activism in the level of funding. The Federal Government initially proposed a monthly benefit of 200 reals (about $55), but the Chamber of Deputies counterproposal of 500 reals put pressure on the government to increase the benefit to 600 reals (about $110).

The legislative branch naturally embodies a broader array of social, political, and economic interests than the President and his Administration, which, although elected with support from several segments of society, has a much smaller reach.

• Congress’s performance indicates that it is able to serve – with at least some presidents – as a co-policymaker, potentially improving the quality of policy debates, acceptability among political actors, and the likelihood of successful implementation. A public opinion poll by Datafolha suggests that four in every 10 Brazilians aged 18 years or older requested emergency coronavirus aid. Indeed, a study by Fundação Getulio Vargas estimates that the program decreased the country’s poverty rate by 23.7 percent (compared to 2019). This means that 15 million Brazilians had left poverty by last August. These results validate the Congressional activism and lay the groundwork for more in the future.

January 12, 2021

* Beatriz Rey is a CLALS Research Fellow. Parts of this article appeared on the Wilson Center website and in the Brazilian Report.