by John Fitzpatrick

Brazilian Congressmen have started to make some long-needed reforms in the House of Representatives. These include ending extra payments for extraordinary sittings during the two official annual recess periods and cutting back on the number of holidays they enjoy. These moves have not been made for altruistic reasons but because of the public backlash against Congressmen, most of whom failed to appear in Brasilia during the recess while pocketing the extra money and perks. There were never more than a handful of members around even though they received two additional monthly salaries totaling around R$25,000 (about U$10,000) plus other benefits. This is in a country where the current minimum wage is R$300 (about U$130) a month. One member was reported to have spent part of the recess at an expensive health resort. This behavior is common during extraordinary sessions but this time the Congressmen went too far. The House´s reputation has fallen to a new low following the "bribes for votes" scandal which has dominated the political scene since the middle of 2005. Congressmen knew they had to do something to assuage public opinion ahead of elections later this year.

The Lower House had a disastrous year in 2005. Things went wrong right from the start when, in February, Congressmen elected as their chairman Severino Cavalcanti, a crude old-style politician from the Northeast who was intellectually and morally unfit for the position. This decision, taken to spite the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, showed contempt for the electorate. Fortunately, Cavalcanti was gone within a few months, victim of a bribery scandal, but the damage to the House´s reputation had already been done. Its response to the allegations that the Workers Party (PT) had been paying some Congressmen bribes in return for their votes was to set up three investigation committees (CPIs). However, it was the media which set the pace and new scandals and villains appeared virtually ever day.

The House did a poor job of sifting through this raw intelligence and the CPIs themselves became bogged down in disputes along party lines as well as egos. The PT members tried to dirty the image of the PSDB and extend the committees´ remits to the Fernando Henrique Cardoso years. Until now, only two Congressmen have been expelled - Roberto Jefferson of the PDT and Jose Dirceu, Lula´s former right hand man - despite the masses of evidence against various others. A few resigned to avoid losing their right to stand as political candidates even though, in the eyes of most people, they had committed offenses. The House has still to decide the fate of about another dozen members but few voters expect any exemplary punishment. With so much effort spent on the CPIs, the legislative process slowed down to a crawl and the country was left in the hands of the executive and judiciary branches of government.        

Although most attention this year will focus on the elections for the presidency and the state governorships, there will also be elections to choose a new House of Representatives and two-thirds of the Senate. The House of Representatives results should let us see whether voters have paid as much attention to the scandal as the media coverage would imply. It would be nice to expect voters to punish errant Congressmen, clear out the dead wood and make way for an influx of new faces and ideas. This is unlikely for a number of reasons. One is the indifference of many Brazilians, particularly the less well educated, to what goes on in Congress. These people have never had any high expectations and have constantly returned Congressmen, Senators, mayors and state governors who have been accused of corruption. In many cases, voters remain loyal to party bosses for local or regional reasons or, in the case of members of evangelical churches, they follow the advice of their spiritual leaders who are also often their political leaders. At the same time, class loyalty means that millions of Brazilians from the lower income groups will continue to support Lula and the PT.   

Same Old Parties, Same Old Faces
In any case, voters will have little chance of electing a legislature with a new look since the scandal has led to no radical overhaul of the parties. There has certainly been lots of public indignation, much of it whipped up by the press, but it has been contained. No popular anti-corruption movement has emerged, such as that which led to the resignation of President Fernando Collor de Mello in 1992. No new breakaway parties of any significance have been formed. The vice president, Jose Alencar, left the PL and helped found the PMR, a similar outfit with an evangelical bent, but this was due more to an internal spat than any reformist move. Another new party is the left-wing PSOL, led by Senator Heloisa Helena who was expelled from the PT. Although this party attracted some dissident PT members, it was in the process of being set up when the scandal broke. Neither of these are likely to attract mass support and voters will face the old familiar acronyms - PT, PMDB, PSDB, PFL, PDT etc - and same old faces.

PT Has Most to Lose
The PT stands to lose most. The scandal has torn aside its claim to be different from the other parties. It has been portrayed as amateurish, avaricious, bullying and cynical in the way it has used its power to browbeat or bribe Congressmen to support the government. It has lost its leadership and credibility. It has also lost the support of middle class people who voted for Lula for the first time in the 2002 election. Much will depend on Lula´s attitude. While Lula can easily exist without the PT, the PT cannot exist as a main party without Lula. Should Lula decide not to seek re-election then the PT would be in an extremely difficult position. Strong backing from Lula could ease the party´s worse fears but, in turn, Lula would demand greater unity and loyalty to his program.   

PSDB Has Strengths..
The PSDB is in a strong position, with the brightest and the best potential candidates. It can point to eight years experience of the Cardoso government when corruption, although it existed, was not on the same scale as we have seen over the last year. It has two strong experienced candidates in Jose Serra, the mayor of São Paulo, and Geraldo Alckmin, the state governor. At the same time, it can call on Aeco Neves, the governor of Minas Gerais, which is Brazil´s second most populous state. Cardoso is in the background as the elder statesman and the party can also depend on the likes of Tasso Jereisatti, former governor of Ceara, who is now its national president. Having said that, there are signs of a fierce battle about to break out between the Serra and Alckmin camps. The latter is desperate for its candidate to be nominated soon while the Serra camp wants to take more time. The choice of either candidate is bound to upset the other and the PT - and the other main parties - will try and exploit this division.     

..and Weaknesses
The PSDB also has some weak points. The investigations into illegal fund-raising methods for electoral campaigns led to the resignation last year of the party´s president, Eduardo Azevedo, who had used them during an unsuccessful re-election bid in Minas Gerais. The PT could also embarrass the PSDB by providing details of alleged corruption during the privatization process in the early years of the Cardoso government when the state telecommunications monopoly, Telebras, the mining giant, CVRD, and others sectors, such as gas and electricity, were sold off. The PT has also claimed that illegal methods were used to obtain votes to ensure that the Constitution was changed to allow Cardoso to stand for a re-election. It is unclear whether there is any truth in these claims the PT has been raising but damage could be done. PT members have recently succeeded in having a CPI set up to investigate the privatization process although it unlikely that it will ever get off the ground.

Lula will also point out that, whereas the Cardoso government devalued the Real and appealed three times to the International Monetary Fund for loans, his government has overseen an export boom, despite an overvalued Real, and paid off Brazil´s debts to the IMF, the Paris Club and even the United Nations. Lula´s government has also experienced average better growth than Cardoso´s and the signs are that an all-out effort will be made this year to ensure that the poorer section of the population feels the effects of this growth at first hand. Money will be spent on high profile projects to improve roads and schools and the government has started to make it clear to the Central Bank that it wants interest rates reduced much further. On January 18, the monetary policy committee cut the rate by 0.75% and further cuts are expected in the coming months.

PMDB Split but Strong
The PMDB has managed to keep clear of this scandal even though it is a member of the governing alliance. This is surprising considering the unsavory reputation it has as a group of vested interests rather than a cohesive political party. It says it will field its own candidate and there are already two names in the ring - Anthony Garotinho, former governor of Rio de Janeiro, and Germano Rigotto, governor of Rio Grande do Sul. However, the pro-government wing, led by Senate chairman, Renan Calheiros, is working for an alliance, with the party providing Lula´s running mate. It is a strong favorite to emerge as the party with the largest number of members in the next Congress.  

PFL Plays Tough
The other main party, the PFL, has also managed to keep its head above the scandal. It has played the role of the bad cop to the PSDB´s good cop in the opposition to the government. Its national chairman, Senator Jorge Bornhausen, has been aggressive in attacking the government and ruling out any possibility of forming an alliance. This goes against the party´s history as an organization which always had a place at the top table. Bornhausen recently gave an interview to Veja magazine in which he pointed out that the PFL was not socialist, like the PT, or social democratic like the PSDB. Bornhausen was too clever or too cowardly to admit that the PFL was a right-wing party and glossed over his own role in the Collor administration. However, it was refreshing to see a Brazilian politician take an ideological point of view for once and state, although rather vaguely, what he stood for.  

The following table shows the make up of these four main parties in the House of Representatives at the time of writing and after the 2002 elections. It can be seen that they have all lost members as some PSDB and PFL members defected to the pro-government parties and vice versa as PT and PMDB members defected to other parties. They currently have a total of 278 seats or 54% of the total compared with 320 seats or 62% of the total in 2002. Other parties have significant blocs - PP (52), PTB (42), PL (40), PSB (29) and PDT (20). Since no party can hope to win an absolute majority the next government - whether led by a President from the PT, PSDB or PMDB - will need to form a Congressional alliance.

Source: House of Representatives web site: www.camara.gov.br   

© John Fitzpatrick 2006