Allies of President Jair Bolsonaro informed CNN that he made the decision to exclude Anvisa from meetings at the Palácio do Planalto this week that would decide on the adoption of the agency’s recommendations to establish the “vaccine passport” in the country and on the extension of the closure from the air border to four more African countries.
According to reports, since Monday morning, the president was already uncomfortable with Anvisa, especially with its CEO, Antonio Barra Torres, who went from being an old ally to being a disaffected one. The president, according to government sources, has criticized Barra Torres for considering that the leader of Anvisa no longer dialogues with the government before making his recommendations, betting on an agenda that is opposite to that which Bolsonaro defends and even criticizes him saying that he only arrived at Anvisa because he had the support of Bolsonaro.
On Monday, for example, the president’s degree of irritation with Barra Torres was high. The information that reached Planalto throughout the day was that the agency would reinforce its recommendations at the meeting and present some conditions for them to take place.
The meeting was scheduled for 5:30 pm, but an hour before it took place, the Federal Supreme Court decided to demand information about the vaccine passport from the government. As none of the two main ministers responsible for the decision would participate in the meeting, Marcelo Queiroga (Health) and Ciro Nogueira (Casa Civil), the presidential cabinet minutes before it started and when most of the executive secretaries who would participate in the meeting were already in Highland.
A new meeting was then decided on this Tuesday with the presence of Bolsonaro to give directions to Ciro and Queiroga. Also participating in the decisions were the Minister of Attorney General of the Union, Bruno Bianco, and the Secretary of Legal Affairs, Pedro Cesar Sousa. Anvisa representatives were not summoned.
The objective was both to pass a government decision on Anvisa’s recommendations. It was decided by an ordinance establishing a quarantine for non-vaccinated. At the meeting, they lined up the legal statement that will be made to the Supreme Court, hence the presence of Bianco and Sousa.
Before the meeting and the speech, Queiroga told the CNN that the meeting with the president would be to “just discuss how to position oneself for society” and that he considered the controversy surrounding the passport and borders a “fire of sterile discussions”. Asked about the threat of the Ômicron variant, he said that “we are doing well and we need to be calm. Last week it was a party and now everything closes?”. And he concluded: “We keep discussing retail when in fact there is an increasingly calm epidemiological scenario. These are the facts, but those more controversial narratives are always sought after”, he concluded.
Wanted, neither Barra Torres nor the Secretary of Communication of the Presidency of the Republic wanted to manifest themselves
Reference: CNN Brasil
