A report six months in the making by a Brazilian Senate committee will recommend that President Jair Bolsonaro be indicted on criminal charges of bungling the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and pushing the country’s death toll to second-highest in the world.
A draft of the report arising from a Senate committee’s investigation, a copy of which was reviewed by the Associated Press on Tuesday, recommends that Bolsonaro be indicted on 11 charges, from charlatanism and inciting crime all the way up to homicide and genocide.
In the committee’s so-called “G7” group of senators who aren’t from Bolsonaro’s base, three opposed inclusion of the homicide and genocide charges, according to five committee members who agreed to discuss details of the sensitive talks only on condition of anonymity. Media reports early Wednesday said those charges will be removed from the final report.
Analysts said it was unclear whether the recommendations would lead to charges against the president. That would be a decision for Brazil’s prosecutor-general, who was appointed by Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro has denied any wrongdoing, and repeatedly accused the investigation of being a political instrument aimed at sabotaging him.
Critics have denounced Bolsonaro for downplaying the coronavirus’ severity, ignoring international health guidelines on masks and other social restrictions, touting unproven treatments and delaying the acquisition of vaccines.
Anger over the president’s stance prompted creation of the Senate committee in April, which has investigated allegations that Bolsonaro’s management of the pandemic caused many of Brazil’s more than 600,000 deaths from COVID-19.
The draft report of nearly 1,200 pages was written by Sen. Renan Calheiros, who was scheduled to present his much-anticipated final version Wednesday to the 11-person committee.
The document has to be approved by the committee before being sent to the office of the prosecutor-general, who would decide whether to carry forward the investigation and perhaps pursue charges. In Brazil, members of congressional committees can investigate but don’t have the power to indict.
Regardless of the exact content of the report’s final version or whether the prosecutor-general moves forward, its allegations are expected to fuel criticism of Bolsonaro, a far-right populist whose approval ratings have slumped ahead of his 2022 reelection campaign.
“The major impact of the investigation is political, because it generated tons of news that certainly will be used by campaign strategists next year,” said Thiago de Aragao, director of strategy at political consultancy Arko Advice.
In its current shape, the draft report concludes that the government “deliberately exposed the population to a concrete risk of mass infection,” influenced by a group of unofficial advisors who advocated for pursuing herd immunity even after many experts said that wasn’t a viable option.
Even during the worst throes of the pandemic, Bolsonaro steadfastly opposed social-distancing measures, contending that poor people would suffer even worse if the economy ground to a halt. He continues to argue that the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine is effective in treating COVID-19, though scientists have dismissed it as ineffective.
During the six months of its investigation, senators obtained thousands of documents and heard testimony from more than 60 people.
“This committee collected evidence that abundantly demonstrated that the federal government was silent and chose to act in a non-technical and reckless manner,” the draft report reads.
A particularly thorny issue was Calheiros’ insistence on including a recommendation that the International Criminal Court investigate Bolsonaro for possible genocide of Indigenous peoples, said the senators who spoke on condition of anonymity. They said that angered committee members, including critics of the government, who called genocide an exaggeration that could threaten the entire report’s credibility.
While there was less opposition among senators to recommending charges of homicide, some had similar concerns about doing so, the senators said.
“The prosecutor-general’s office will look with a magnifying glass for errors, failures and inconsistencies in order to wash their hands of it,” said political analyst Carlos Melo, who teaches at Insper University in Sao Paulo. “If you have 10 accusations that are very strong, and one that has inconsistencies, that’s what the government will latch onto, to try and discredit the whole report.”
In addition to Bolsonaro, the draft report recommended charges for dozens of allies and current and former members of his administration.
