No Cuts to Military Forces for Olympic Games - Rio Roundup

(ATR) There will be no cuts to military security forces for the Olympic Games.

Newly appointed Minister of Justice and Citizenship Alexandre de Moraes visited Rio de Janeiro yesterday for the first time to meet with Rio State Secretary of Security Mario Beltrame and Secretary of Security for Major Events Andrei Rodrigues. The trio took a helicopter ride over the city to survey Olympic venues and visited the Rio Center for Integrated Command and Control.

It was the first visit to Rio for Moraes, who is now in charge of public security forces ahead of the Olympics.

After the meeting Moraes confirmed that the full slate of 9,000 national military forces will be in Rio de Janeiro for the Games. Earlier this month Beltrame told local media that he was worried the number of military personnel available would be cut in half, creating an extra burden for local police forces during the Games.

"Things will be completely effective, whether it is with the national forces or military police," Moares told local media after the meeting. "We may have changes in order to optimize, but from a security point of view I am calm, thanks to everyone’s joint work."

Rio de Janeiro will have close to 85,000 security forces during the Games, nearly twice the amount of forces that were used in London four years ago.

Transparency Minister Out

The second minister in acting President Michel Temer’s government has resigned.

Transparency minister Fabiano Silveira stepped down from his position yesterday after leaked recordings suggested he had been working with political allies in the Brazilian government to stall the current Petrobras corruption scandal.

The recordings, which were released on May 29 by Globo, showed Silveira colluding with Senate President Renan Calheiros on how to defend themselves against the current investigation. A spokesperson for Silveira told local media after the tapes were released that the conversations were taken out of context.

Despite acting President Temer calling for Silveira to stay, senior level staffers in the ministry resigned from their positions early in the day to call for the minister’s resignation. The previous employees went to the ministry building and scrubbed it with soap and water to represent the need to clean up the government.

No replacement for Silveira has been named.

Silveira joins previous Minister of Planning Romero Jucá as two high-profile resignations in the first month of Temer’s government. The resignations are seen by local media as a blow to the acting President’s goal of a unification government in the wake of a political crisis. A majority of Brazilians do not support Temer as President, despite calls for the resignation of suspended President Dilma Rousseff.

Written by Aaron Bauer in Rio de Janeiro

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