The candidate for re-election to the presidency Jair Bolsonaro said that there was no delay in the start of vaccination against covid-19 and that Brazil was one of the countries that vaccinated the most in the world. He participated, on Monday night (26) in a sabbath on TV Record, when he was asked about criticism that the Brazilian government had delayed vaccination.
“They wanted me to buy a vaccine in 2020. Point me to a country that sold a dose of vaccine in 2020. The first vaccine in the world was applied in December 2020. In Brazil, we started to apply it in January 2021. I bought 500 million doses, so that every Brazilian who wanted to take it, voluntarily, took it,” Bolsonaro said.
When asked if there had been no delay in accepting the offer from the Pfizer laboratory, Bolsonaro said that the conditions required by the company were difficult to accept.
“The contract they wanted us to sign in December was postponed because Pfizer itself said it was not responsible for the side effects. Brazil could not have any legal action against possible deaths. It was a range of conditions that I could not accept. We bought the vaccine the following year, with a much higher delivery condition,” he said.
Regarding the decisions of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), vetoing him from using excerpts from the September 7 commemorations in his campaign and from broadcasting live from Palácio da Alvorada, Bolsonaro classified the decisions as political persecution.
“I don’t run the TSE. There’s no way to convince them. I am prohibited from doing live inside my official home. I have to go to someone’s house. Political persecution. I cannot use the images of 7 de Setembro in the free election time. The TSE is constantly accepting any party action to disrupt my campaign,” he said.
Bolsonaro was also asked about the fires in the Amazon and whether there were suspicions of illegal actions in the forest fires. According to him, the government has been working, including with the Armed Forces, to combat this type of crime.
“The Amazon is an area equivalent to western Europe. Criminal fire exists, criminal deforestation exists, but not in these numbers that speak for themselves. This policy of overestimating numbers has to do with the agribusiness market. They threatened, all the time, not to import food from us, in view of false accusations of fire and disproportionate deforestation in the Amazon. We did several operations with the Armed Forces,” he said.
