In the Planalto Palace, today, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva empowered three new ministers chosen due to a reshuffle in the cabinet.
Senator Hélio Costa, from the PMDB party of Minas Gerais state, will be replacing Eunício Oliveira as Minister of Communications.
Deputy Saraiva Felipe, also from the Minas PMDB, will be filling the place of Humberto Costa of the Workers Party (PT) as Minister of Health.
Silas Rondeau, is substituting for Maurício Tolmasquim as Minister of Mines and Energy. Tolmasquim assumed the post on an interim basis in June, when Minister Dilma Rousseff resigned to become Presidential Chief of Staff.
The three new Ministers were named by the PMDB.
Senator Hélio Costa is a journalist and was born in Barbacena, Minas Gerais. In the Senate he acted as vice-leader of the government and the PMDB.
In 2004 the Inter-Union Department of Parliamentary Advisers (Diap) named him one of the most active legislators in the National Congress. Costa was twice elected Federal Deputy, in 1986 and 1999.
Deputy Saraiva Felipe is 53 years old, a physician, and has a master’s degree in public health. He is in his third term as Federal Deputy.
He was secretary of the Ministry of Health in 1989-90 and secretary of Health in Minas Gerais between 1991 and 1994.
He also held one of his party’s most important positions, serving as general secretary of the National Executive Commission of the PMDB from 1998 to 2001.
Silas Rondeau assumed the presidency of Eletrobrás in May, 2004, replacing the physicist, Luiz Pinguelli Rosa. Prior to that, from January, 2003, to May, 2004, he was president of Eletronorte.
He was also president of Boa Vista Energy and Manaus Energy. Rondeau is on leave from a professorship at the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA).
ABr – www.radiobras.gov.br