The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, downplayed this Wednesday the purchases of around “50,000 tablets” of the Viagra drug for the Armed Forces, a measure that caused a stir this Monday after a deputy’s complaint.
“It was thirty-some thousand tablets for the Army, ten thousand for the Navy, and a number that I don’t remember for the Aeronautics, but it must add up to a total of fifty thousand tablets. With all due respect, that’s nothing,” Bolsonaro said in the official Palacio de la Alvorada, referring to the disputed acquisition of the drug that contains sildenafil, the basic component used to treat erectile dysfunction.
The far-right president indicated that “the amount for the troops of the three forces is insignificant, obviously, much more used by the inactive and pensioners.”
The state audit court opened an investigation into the purchase of the tablets to determine if there were overprices in the acquisition.
Bolsonaro justified that “the Armed Forces buy Viagra to combat high blood pressure and also rheumatic diseases.”
On Monday, the center-left deputy Elias Vaz revealed the approval of the purchase of 35,000 sildenafil tablets for the armed forces, without the mention of the trade name Viagra. The parliamentarian obtained the information from a request on the Government Transparency Portal, which allows access to public spending data.
That same day, in the midst of a barrage of sarcasm on social networks, the Ministry of Defense stated that these acquisitions were intended “for the treatment of patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension”, since the drug also allows the vessels of the lungs to dilate.
Vaz added a new seasoning to the scandal on Tuesday, by identifying “a millionaire expense” in penile prostheses for the army, with information from the same source.
According to Vaz, the government spent about 3.5 million reais (about 745,000 dollars) on 60 silicone prostheses, between 10 and 25 centimeters.
The Brazilian army said in a note sent to AFP that only 3 prostheses were acquired, in bidding processes that met all legal requirements.
Bolsonaro also criticized the media coverage of the matter: “Every day we are beaten by a press that has a lot of bad faith and is also ignorant on the subject,” he said.
