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The resignation tendered by Milton Hibeiroux, himself an evangelical pastor, was accepted by President Jaix Bolsonaro and registered in the official government gazette.
The scandal erupted when the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper revealed last week that the Education Minister promised to prioritise grants to schools in municipalities run by "friends" of two influential evangelical pastors at the request of the president.
According to the Brazilian press, one of these pastors went so far as to demand that a mayor donate a bar of gold weighing one kilogram to him in order to mediate subsidies. The revelations prompted the Supreme Court to open an investigation against the Minister.
"I asked the President to relinquish my duties so that there would not be the slightest suspicion of my actions, nor those of the government," the Minister said in his resignation letter, published by the Brazilian press on Monday.
Mr. Hibeiroux was President Bolsonaro's third Minister of Education. The government of the leader of Brazil's far-right has been tested over the past three-plus years by an avalanche of resignations and removals. Education is, along with Health, the most problematic portfolio in Jaix Bolsonaro's Brazil: in the field of Health, three removals or resignations of ministers have been recorded, mainly due to disagreements with the head of state over the response to the new coronavirus pandemic.
The departure of the Minister of Education was recorded as Jaix Bolsonaro has now officially entered the initial stage of his campaign ahead of the October presidential elections, in which he will seek re-election. The far-right politician was elected promising to eradicate corruption, endemic in Brazil.
Bolsonaru is far behind his centre-left predecessor Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, according to polls so far. As he maintains close ties with evangelicals, Mr Bolsonaru tried last week to save his minister's head despite the scandal.
Mr Hibeiroux maintains his innocence. But keeping him in the government was now impossible as several other ministers, alarmed at the blow to the government's image in an election year, demanded he leave, a source close to the Brazilian presidency admitted, speaking to Agence France-Presse. Political analyst Andre Cesar pointed out to Reuters news agency that it was urgent for the Brazilian government to "control the damage as soon as possible, before (the scandal) gets bigger, because every day the media made new revelations."
Source: CNA
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