SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro said on Thursday he would appoint economist Carlos Alberto Decotelli da Silva as education minister, according to an announcement on social media.
The first Black minister in Bolsonaro’s cabinet, Decotelli served as the head of Brazil’s National Education Development Fund (FNDE) from February to August 2019.
Decotelli was a professor at Brazil’s naval academy, a military connection that led him to back Bolsonaro’s election campaign in 2018 and become involved in the transition team. A former army captain, Bolsonaro has filled nearly a third of his cabinet with active and retired military officers.
Decotelli is Bolsonaro’s third education minister since taking office in January last year. The first served for just three months and the second, Abraham Weintraub, for 14 months.
Weintraub, one of the loudest right-wing ideologues in Bolsonaro’s cabinet, resigned last week, a target of a Supreme Court probe after the release of a videotape in which he called its judges “bums” who should be jailed.
Bolsonaro nominated Weintraub to be an executive director at the World Bank and he left for the United States last Friday.
The association representing staff at the World Bank on Wednesday asked that his nomination be reviewed by the banks’ ethics committee over racially insensitive comments, including mocking Chinese accents.
(Reporting by Eduardo Simes; Writing and additional reporting by Anthony Boadle; editing by Grant McCool)
