‘For health’ of whom, nouveau-riche candidate?

To the facts, hard and non-negotiable like a force of nature. The image is of an emergency room in the interior of Paraná, taken last Friday (the 2nd). There are 19 beds — equipment and professionals for 19 beds —, yet more than 70 patients share the space, occupied predominantly by elderly Black people. One of the managers: “in these conditions, they live less.”

That is when I feel like, hearing candidates “for health,” throwing a very rotten tomato and a very rotten egg at them. Hard, to hurt, right in the brazen faces of these superficial and irresponsible people. They know little or nothing about the objective reality of a public health system.

For most of the federal legislative candidates I know of, especially, the poor are nothing but a nuisance. Another hospital manager: “patients with private health plans complained when passing through the SUS wards” (SUS is Brazil’s public health system). Poor sick and injured people do not go with the nouveau riche.

That “crowd” of candidates thinks they have reached the world’s elite by buying a house with arches, a tacky car, a cellphone that masks the terrible quality of their skin. Let us vote well, my friends, for those who heed what Saint Peter asked of Saint Paul, described in Galatians: “remember the poor.”