Sunday 23 May 2021
Maskless bath in the crowd
Bolsonaro threatens a sensitive corona penalty
Brazil’s President has a reputation for regularly playing down the corona pandemic. He ignores the mask requirement at a performance in the state of Maranhão and is now asked to pay for it. The fine could be up to 230,000 euros.
After bathing in the crowd without a mask, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was fined for violating the corona requirements. “The law applies equally to everyone,” said left-wing governor of Maranhão state, Flavio Dino, on Twitter. Gatherings of more than a hundred people are prohibited in the state and masks are compulsory. The president is now threatened with a fine of between 300 and 230,000 euros.
The ultra-right Bolsonaro was on Friday at an official ceremony in Açailandia around 500 kilometers from São Luis, the capital of Maranhão in northeast Brazil. Videos of his appearance on his Twitter account showed him in the midst of a crowd of several hundred people – without a mask. The first cases of the Indian coronavirus variant were confirmed in the state on Thursday.
Brazil is already badly hit by the pandemic, which critics of Bolsonaro blame the far-right president, who has played down the coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic. A Brazilian senator accused Bolsonaro of deliberately downplaying the pandemic in order to bet on herd immunity. “The president first denied the disease, called it the flu, and then argued against social isolation and lockdown. Then he downplayed the use of masks and encouraged people to gather together,” said Renan Calheiros, who oversaw the House of Lords investigation Heads the government’s handling of the crisis. It is too early to say whether Bolsonaro has committed a crime with his way of managing the crisis, the senator said.
Brazil has nearly 16 million coronavirus cases and has the second highest death rate in the world after the United States with nearly 450,000 deaths.
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