Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro appointed center-right Senator Ciro Nogueira as his chief of staff on Wednesday to shore up waning political support in Congress, and recreated the labor ministry to deal with record unemployment.
Nogueira, a leader of the Progressives Party (PP) to which lower house speaker Arthur Lira also belongs, will be Bolsonaro’s closest aide and minister, replacing a retired general.
His appointment is expected to improving the far-right president’s relations with Congress, where there have been dozens of requests for his impeachment as his popularity drops during the world’s second-deadliest COVID-19 outbreak.
A Senate investigation has uncovered potential irregularities in the government’s purchase of COVID-19 vaccines needed to fight a pandemic whose gravity Bolsonaro has minimized despite the deaths of more than 550,000 Brazilians.
Bolsonaro also appointed Onyx Lorenzoni to head a new Ministry of Labor and Social Security tasked with tackling record unemployment exacerbated by the pandemic. Brazil’s jobless rate was at a historic high of 14.7% in April.
The labor ministry, dating back to 1930, was dissolved by Bolsonaro on his fist day in office on Jan. 1, 2019, as he sought to reduce the size of the state’s involvement in the economy under free-market Economy Minster Paulo Guedes.
Lorenzoni will be responsible for labor policies aimed at generating employment and supporting workers, according to a decree issued by Bolsonaro recreating the ministry.
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