Bolsonaro Backpedals After Badmouthing Northeastern Governors

(Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro visited the country’s northeast Tuesday, seeking to make amends for a disparaging comment about the region’s governors that prompted a political backlash.

“I love the northeast,” he said in a speech to inaugurate an airport in the state of Bahia, adding that his daughter had northeastern blood in her veins.

The state’s governor, Rui Costa, of the opposition leftwing Workers’ Party had been due to accompany the president, but he withdrew following the furore over Bolsonaro’s remarks. While the outrage from the northeast’s political leaders may be largely synthetic, Bolsonaro has acknowledged its potential damage by seeking to clarify his comments.

The impoverished region is home to over a quarter of Brazil’s electorate, and its representatives in Congress are a significant political force. They have succeeded in keeping state and municipal governments out of the government’s proposed pension reform -- Bolsonaro’s flagship economic policy -- and alienating the region’s lawmakers risks jeopardizing further his legislative agenda.

Ahead of Tuesday’s ceremony, Bolsonaro accused Costa of endangering his security by withdrawing a police detail. The governor responded on social media by saying that the army had already closed the airport to keep the president safe and that no further policing would be needed.

“I’m not in Bahia, I’m in Brazil,” he said. “There are no distinctions among us, not sex, race, skin color, religion or region, we are all one people. We have one common objective, that is putting this great country where it belongs.”

Paraiba Governors

The comments that sparked the outcry in the region came on Friday, when Bolsonaro said, “of those governors from Paraiba, the worst is the one from Maranhao: we’ve got to have nothing to do with that guy.” Paraiba is the name of one of the northeastern states, but it is also a derogatory term for the region as a whole. The northeast was the only region of Brazil where Bolsonaro lost to his rival, Fernando Haddad, in the 2018 election.

Flavio Dino, the governor of Maranhao, said it was an “honor” to be considered the worst by Bolsonaro. A letter signed by the region’s nine governors described their “profound indignation and horror” at the president’s comments and demanded clarification. “Regardless of normal political difference, the federal principal demands that governments maintain dialogue,” the letter stated.

Amid widespread repudiation, the president backtracked a little, tweeting that he had only criticized the governors, not the people. He followed up with a number of other posts about what his government was doing for the northeast, including one with a photo of himself wearing an iconic regional hat.

Opposition lawmakers, however, plan to exploit his comments for maximum political gain. Marcio Jerry, a congressman from the Communist Party of Brazil in Maranhao, said northeastern deputies plan to open an impeachment investigation against Bolsonaro for his alleged threat to cut off federal resources from an opposition governor. He also wants the president to be criminally charged for regional discrimination.

“It was an attitude that is incompatible with the position of President of the Republic,” he said. “He cannot treat opposition state governors as the enemy.”

While the impeachment request is unlikely to get far, the gaffe creates yet another unnecessary headache for the government.

For Rodrigues Junior, a police officer and active Bolsonaro supporter in the northeastern state of Ceara, the president’s words have been taken out of context. But he added that he would like to see an improvement in Bolsonaro’s communication strategy.

“Sometimes people interpret him in the wrong way,” he said. “He needs more organized advisers because everything he says has repercussions.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Mario Sergio Lima in Brasilia Newsroom at mlima11@bloomberg.net;Bruce Douglas in Brasilia Newsroom at bdouglas24@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Juan Pablo Spinetto at jspinetto@bloomberg.net, Walter Brandimarte, Robert Jameson

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