Brazilian senators vote on a damn Covid report

A Senate committee in Brazil will meet shortly to vote on whether to approve a harmful report on the government’s handling of the Covid pandemic.

The report, presented to the Senate last week, recommends that President Jair Bolsonaro be charged, including crimes against humanity.

It is the culmination of a six-month investigation that revealed scandals and corruption within the government.

President Bolsonaro said he was “guilty of nothing”.

The report also accuses the president of abusing public funds and selling fake news. In total, he could face nine criminal charges.

But Bolsonaro insisted that his government “did the right thing right from the start.”

More than 600,000 people in Brazil are confirmed to have died of Covid, second only to the death toll of Covid in the United States.

Brazil is preparing for another week of political drama.

These last few months have brought to light scandal after scandal and have shed light on the actions of a government accused of being reckless with the lives of hundreds of thousands of Brazilians.

Now, the 11 senators who conducted the parliamentary inquiry will have to vote on whether to approve his final report.

Despite the divisions within the panel, most senators are critical of Jair Bolsonaro, so he should pass.

But even if the report is approved, there is no guarantee that it will lead to criminal charges as the recommendations contained in it will need to be reported to the federal prosecutor.

The prosecutor will then assess whether there is sufficient evidence to pursue the criminal charges.

Regardless of whether allegations are made against him or not, there is no doubt that the president’s popularity has been dented by his handling of the pandemic.

In March, he caused outrage when he told Brazilians to “stop complaining” about Covid, a day after the country saw a record rise in deaths over a 24-hour period.

It continued to spread disinformation on social media and, on Monday, Facebook removed a video in which the president falsely claimed that Covid-19 vaccines were linked to the development of AIDS.

YouTube blocked the video and suspended the Bolsonaro channel for a week.