‘Our government respects no one and no one respects Brazil’, says former President Lula

With information from UOL

Former President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, made an assessment of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil and put the lack of national coordination as the main reason for the spread of the disease, in a criticism of the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro.

For Lula, Bolsonaro’s attitudes are the reason for the negative image that the country has been experiencing in the fight against Covid-19. “Our government respects no one and no one respects Brazil'” Lula said in an interview with journalist Christiane Amanpour, shown on Thursday, 18, on CNN International.

“This is a disease that has no control in Brazil. The governors are making a tremendous effort, but the President of the Republic does not assume responsibility and is even prescribing medicines that do not work”, added the former president, referring mainly to chloroquine.

Lula admitted that at the beginning of the pandemic, governments in several countries did not know how to deal with the disease and that it had no known severity or treatment. However, the former president believes that a “national protocol” against Covid-19 should have been created.

“Covid-19 started having an inadequate treatment in Brazil and the world. The president did not believe in the seriousness of the pandemic, he thought it was the flu and was against the use of masks. A good administrator would have created a scientific committee with governors and health authorities to have a national protocol”, he concludes.