Ciro Nogueira admits there was an exchange of positions for support and calls himself Bolsonaro's "lightning rod".
"The president started choosing technicians from my party. When I arrived at the Civil House, I came only with my chief of staff," reveals Nogueira.
247- The leader of the Centrão bloc and responsible for the political coordination between the Presidential Palace and Congress, Senator Ciro Nogueira, confirmed this in an interview with... The GlobeHe stated that Bolsonaro's decision to give him the power to manage the 2022 budget was a strategy to secure support for his reelection campaign. The Chief of Staff said that he is now Bolsonaro's buffer and the "lightning rod" for Paulo Guedes, the Minister of Economy.
Nogueira admitted that the quid pro quo relationship between Bolsonaro and the PP is longstanding. According to him, support for Bolsonaro began long before the party received positions and grew within the government. "It's logical that there was a rapprochement, and the president started choosing technicians from my party. When I arrived at the Civil House, I came only with my chief of staff," he reveals.
In addition to signing the budget, which placed Nogueira in a privileged position to define how federal money will be spent, the Chief of Staff will have the difficult task of coordinating Bolsonaro's campaign, who is trailing far behind former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in all scenarios.
When asked what made the Chief of Staff radically change his stance towards Bolsonaro when he called him "fascist and prejudiced" in 2017, and today become the president's "lightning rod and buffer," Nogueira said that the Bolsonaro government "was capable of making the transformations," especially regarding the handling of the Covid pandemic in Brazil. "I firmly believe in his project," he stated.
"We had a president who faced the biggest pandemic in our history without the country experiencing looting and violence, and who provided support to the population; he was able to extend the Bolsa Família program in the form of emergency aid to the population for 13 years without bankrupting the country."
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