Recife (Brazil), Jan 1 (EFE) .- The mayors of the Brazilian municipalities elected in November assumed their mandates this Friday amid the increase in deaths from covid-19 in one of the countries most affected by the pandemic and a serious economic crisis in which local management becomes increasingly relevant.
In his inauguration speech in the Municipal Legislative Chamber, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, who had already commanded the city (2009-2016), pointed out that his first action in the face of the pandemic will be the “creation of a committee of specialists made up, for the most part, by people outside the Mayor’s Office “.
“We will already start with an Emergency Operations Center for covid (COE Covid 19) and a system of risk states classified by each administrative region of the city,” said Paes, who assumes in the midst of a growing occupancy rate of the Rio’s intensive care units (ICU).
Paes defeated the evangelical pastor Marcelo Crivella, who had the support of the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, and was imprisoned ten days after leaving office for crimes of corruption. The mayor of Rio later received a habeas corpus to respond to the Justice in house arrest.
“Never in the history of the city has a mayor received such a perverse inheritance from his predecessor, but we will be able to rebuild this city,” said Paes in his speech.
In Sao Paulo, the largest city in the country, the social democrat Bruno Covas was re-elected, who fights against cancer and has been a squire of the state governor, Joao Doria, one of the opposition leaders to Bolsonaro and who has been at the forefront in the implementation of a vaccine to combat the coronavirus.
Brazil, one of the three countries hardest hit in the world in absolute numbers by the new coronavirus, ended 2020 with almost 7.7 million confirmed cases and close to 195,000 deaths related to covid-19.
POLITICAL MAP
The municipal elections in Brazil were always a thermometer for the general elections that are held two years later and those held in 2020, which had to be postponed for a month due to the restrictions imposed in the pandemic, drew some lines of what the pulse will be. of the presidential dispute in 2022.
The once powerful Workers Party (PT), the main left-wing formation that was in power between 2003 and 2016 with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, was the biggest defeated in the November municipal elections, losing on November 29, 5% of the mayoralties it had in 2016.
At present, the PT will govern only 179 municipalities (3.2% of the total) and for the first time in this century it will not command any capital.
But the polarization between the left and the extreme right also led the candidates supported directly by Bolsonaro to lose, despite the president still having positive popularity ratings that answer criticism for his questioned management in the face of the pandemic and his controversial environmental policy.
Other leftist formations, such as the Socialism and Freedom Party (Psol), in Sao Paulo, and the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), in Porto Alegre, reached the second electoral round with an expressive vote, but were ultimately defeated by the right wing and its performance at the national level remains flawed.
The great winner in the contest was the center-right, a movement that groups together more moderate parties in its discourse, but which are part of the country’s old politics and now seem to draw a divider and emerge with force among the dispute of the leftist current led by Lula and the extreme right of Bolsonaro.
Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Porto Alegre and Curitiba, for example, will be governed by the center-right, while Fortaleza and Recife, two major metropolises in the Northeast region, managed to keep progressive sector parties in the local government, although more moderate than the extreme left.
COVID AND MISBLES IN THE JUSTICE
In the diverse Brazilian political scene, only 5,472 mayors managed to take office this Friday, since another 96 still depend on the endorsement of Justice to take office after being denounced for different crimes, most of an electoral nature.
The covid-19 also caused that in municipalities such as Santo Antonio das Missoes (Rio Grande do Sul) and Tapiraí (Sao Paulo), in which the mayor died before taking office, the vice mayor and others, such as Maguito Vilela, from Goiania -capital of Goiás- remain hospitalized due to the coronavirus.
The youngest mayor to take office was Julio Tomazela Neto, 21, in the São Paulo city of Conchas, and the oldest José Braz, 95, in the municipality of Muriaé (Minas Gerais); while Joao Campos, 27, will be in charge of Recife, capital of Pernambuco. EFE
wgm / ares
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