As happened to his grandfather, the former mayor and governor Mário Covas, 20 years ago, cancer interrupted the life of Bruno Covas. The mayor of São Paulo died this Sunday at the age of 41. Covas had been admitted to the Syrian Lebanese Hospital in the São Paulo capital since May 2 to treat a hemorrhage in the digestive system, a region in which he has been fighting a cancerous tumor since 2019. Member of one of the most important political dynasties of the State, The PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) politician was elected in November 2020 to his mandate at the head of the largest city in Latin America - before, he held the position since 2018, because he assumed the position by the election of the incumbent João Doria to the state government. Covas was on leave from the City Council since the beginning of the month,when the cancer spread from the cardia, between the esophagus and the stomach, to the liver and the bones of the politician. Deputy Mayor Ricardo Nunes, a politician with a conservative profile, linked to the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), will take over the administration of São Paulo until 2024.
Bruno Covas was born in Santos in 1980, a year after his grandfather, Mário, regained his political rights during the final phase of the dictatorship. Son of the politician's eldest daughter, Renata, Bruno had his life and career linked to that of his grandfather by his surname. While studying at private schools in Santos in the 80s and 90s, Bruno saw Mário being elected federal deputy, becoming mayor of São Paulo, breaking the record of votes for an elective office when he ran for senator, leaving the PMDB to found the PSDB and run for the presidency of Brazil until, in 1994, he won the election as governor of the state, the last position he held in his life.
The year that Mário Covas was sworn in as São Paulo governor, in 1995, Bruno moved to São Paulo to study at the Colégio Bandeirantes and live with his grandfather. Three years later, he entered the University of São Paulo (USP) as a law student, graduating in 2002, and at the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC-SP) as an economics student, graduating in 2005. When he passed the exams of access to the university, influenced by his grandfather, he joined the PSDB, he was elected first secretary of the young party organization in 1999, president of the São Paulo section in 2003 and national president in 2007. Mário Covas died in March 2001, after resigning from the post of governor, due to bladder cancer.
Before even finishing his second university degree, Bruno Covas competed in his first municipal election as vice of Raul Christiano, from the PSDB, for the Santos City Council, when they came in fourth place. However, the good memories of the Paulistas linked to his surname earned him more than 120,000 votes in 2006 and the election as a state deputy in São Paulo. At age 30, he was re-elected as the most voted in the state with almost 240,000 votes. He left his position to join the government of Geraldo Alckmin, in 2011, as Secretary of the Environment, a position he held until 2014.
After a successful start in political life, he arrived in Brasilia as an elected federal deputy in 2014. It was only two years in the Federal Chamber, in which he voted in favor of the impeachment of President Dilma Roussef (PT) in 2016. “So that we can rescue hope in this country, in ourselves, in the institutions and in democracy ”, he justified then. That same year, he was elected vice mayor of São Paulo in the formula of João Doria (PSDB), and effectively assumed the City Council of the largest city in the country in 2018, when Doria left him to run for the state governor's election.
The life of Bruno Covas is divided between before and after being mayor of São Paulo. Starting with the physical and aesthetic issue. Remembered in previous campaigns as a figure with starchy hair and an overweight body, Bruno assumed baldness, adopted a beard and lost 20 kilos with a fitness routine, which combined a restricted diet with new exercises. A healthier and younger look, with which he faced a collapsed viaduct on the Marginal Pinheiros expressway, the truckers' strike and the fire in an irregular occupation in the central Largo do Paissandu, events that happened in 2018. He was only told would see dejected by his first diagnosis of cardiac cancer, in the region between the esophagus and the stomach, in October 2019, a year and a half after taking office.The disease would cause him to lose his beard and even more weight.
At first, Covas assured that he would not request the removal of the City Council to treat the tumor. And he tried to be transparent about the evolution of the cancer: in July of the following year, he told the journalist Marina Rossi that he had already undergone eight chemotherapy sessions "which made two of the three tumors regress at most." Between diagnosis and improvement, the covid-19 pandemic was the biggest challenge in the social democrat's political career, who sometimes heard complaints from the commercial sector for adopting an overly restrictive shutdown, while at other times it received criticism from epidemiologists for making the economy more flexible than science recommends. “Normally, when they hit us from both sides, both those who don't want us to reopen and those who want us to open,it is because we are managing to find a middle ground between what is possible and what is not, "he said, although he stressed that" the greatest good to preserve is life. You don't have a consumer if everyone dies ”. The mayor lived in City Hall for three months at the beginning of the health crisis and was infected with the virus in July 2020, but recovered quickly.
With another six immunotherapy sessions until the end of 2020, Bruno improved to the point of running for and winning the São Paulo municipal elections last November. He had a moderate speech: he opposed the denialism of Jair Bolsonaro, who had his representative in the São Paulo elections in Celso Russomanno (Republicans), and defeated the leftist Guilherme Boulos (PSOL), who had the support of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) in the second round, calling for moderation instead of "radicalism." His son Tomás, the fruit of his marriage from 2004 to 2014 with Karen Ichiba, appeared as a great companion to the mayor. Inside the Matarazzo building, the seat of the City Council, the mayor received a visit from his son and celebrated, without a party, the arrival of his 40th birthday.In the last controversy in which he was involved, he took Tomás to see the final of the Copa Libertadores at Maracana on January 30, cheering on his team, Santos, against Palmeiras. He was criticized because, while he was cheering from the stands in Rio de Janeiro, in São Paulo a decree was in force - and still is - that prohibits the presence of the public at football matches.
The following month, he revealed that the last of the three tumors had not regressed, but had worsened, spreading to the mayor's liver and bones.
He still had to deal with the worst phase of the pandemic in his city during March and April 2021, before being hospitalized on April 15 for further chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatment.
He was discharged on the 27th, but he did not improve.
The controversial election of Ricardo Nunes
Bruno Covas was seen as a hope for renewal in the weakened PSDB, which saw its national influence diminish year after year, after leaving the Brazilian presidency that he held with Fernando Henrique Cardoso between 1995 and 2002. São Paulo then became a bastion strategic of the party's social democratic origins and was the politician responsible for keeping it intact, winning the elections last November. Despite his moderate profile, like that of his grandfather, Covas chose as his running mate the conservative Ricardo Nunes, a councilor with a speech aligned with Bolsonarista rhetoric, opposed to the policies of sexual diversity and abortion and defender of the restrictive project educational School without a Party. Nunes,who also has a complaint for domestic violence filed against him by his wife years ago (she says she does not remember the episode), barely made an appearance during the electoral campaign. Behind the scenes, Nunes's election to the position was credited to Governor João Doria, who would be articulating MDB support for his possible candidacy for the presidency of Brazil in 2022.
In the 20 months that he faced the disease, Bruno Covas only stepped down as mayor once: on May 2, a Sunday, transferring his powers to Ricardo Nunes for a period that would be 30 days. In one of his latest posts on social networks, he appears smiling: "Without lowering his head and without losing motivation."