Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro relativized on Wednesday the purchase of around "50,000 tablets" of viagra for the army, accusing the press of "bad faith" after the controversy which provoked sarcastic reactions on social networks.
“There were about 30,000 tablets for the Army, 10,000 for the Navy and I can't remember the figure for the Air Force, but it must be 50,000 in total.
Frankly, it's nothing, "said the head of state during a breakfast with evangelical pastors at the Presidential Palace of Alvorada.
For "retired soldiers"
Jair Bolsonaro considered this quantity insignificant, "since it concerns the three armies and that (the tablets) are mainly used by retired soldiers".
He then took up the argument used Monday by the Ministry of Defense, explaining that "the army buys viagra to fight high blood pressure and rheumatological diseases".
On Monday, the centre-left MP Elias Vaz revealed the Ministry of Defense's approval of an order for 35,000 tablets of Viagra, cited in official documents as "sildenafil", the molecule of the famous drug against erection disorders.
On Tuesday, this same parliamentarian made another revelation: the purchase for the army of 60 inflatable penile implants, also used against erection problems.
With a unit value of 9,900 to 12,000 euros, these silicone prostheses 10 to 25 centimeters long cost the government some 3.5 million reais (688,000 euros), according to Elias Vaz.
Jair Bolsonaro did not provide an explanation for this purchase on Wednesday.
But he castigated "the bad faith press which does not know what it is talking about".
These revelations have sparked dozens of reactions from Internet users, some of them evoking in particular the memory of the military "dicta-hard", with generals in power from 1964 to 1985.
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