MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolsonaro in the process of purging some 3.300 federal staff allegedly communists or socialists

According to media reports from Brasilia some 3.357 federal staff were removed from their posts, and this does not include those who stayed at home.

The new government in Brazil, headed by President Jair Bolsonaro, has initiated the process of firing any “communists” and “socialists” working as contractors in government departments contending those holding opposition ideological views cannot properly execute its goals.

Jair Bolsonaro’s chief of staff Onyx Lorenzoni told reporters that purging the ideological opponents is “the only way to govern with our ideas, our concepts and to carry out what Brazil's society decided in its majority,“

“It doesn’t make sense to have officials with antagonistic ideological orientations [working for us],” Lorenzoni added. “It is not reasonable to have socialists, communists, any of that stuff here.”

Pointing out that people’s mandate is to remove Marxists from top positions in the government, Lorenzoni emphasized “Society said ‘enough’ to prevailing socialist and communist ideas which, in the past 30 years, brought us to the chaos we are are living today.”

Lorenzoni also stressed that purging process will not be a “witch hunt” and, to that end, “first we dismiss, then we discuss,” and those who are found to be compatible workers for Bolsonaro’s government will return to their positions. Likewise several cabinet agencies were also abolished.

The proposed move however will not affect government employees, who enter Brazil's public service through a competitive exam and are assured of service continuity by safeguard clauses in the constitution.

And in effect the Official Gazette of the Union, last Thursday was extraordinarily thick, and extra edition with some 430 pages, which included the removal of at least 371 federal employees, mainly from the Finance ministry, Planning Office, Industry and the former Labor ministry allegedly have prepared a list with 3.024 names, mostly staff with contracts or in confidence posts.

According to media reports from Brasilia some 3.357 federal staff were removed from their posts, and this does not include those who stayed at home.

Jair Bolsonaro has openly declared that he will liberate his country from socialism and vowed “to unite the people, rescue the family, respect religions, Judeo-Christian tradition, combat genre ideology and conserve values”.

Regarded as a far-right firebrand, Bolsonaro won a sweeping victory in Brazil’s presidential election (55% of the vote) by defeating his leftist opponent and Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad, who was backed by the country’s former President “Lula” da Silva, currently in jail on corruption charges. Bolsonaro’s remarkable victory represents a tectonic shift in Brazilian politics that has been historically dominated by left-wing politics.