by John Fitzpatrick

Here we go again. The old familiar story unwinds. A magazine prints an article exposing corruption and skullduggery in a publicly-owned organization and a high-ranking politician is involved. The general public is not particularly interested, since it knows that nothing will be done to punish the wrongdoers, but certain politicians react with glee while others with woe. Calls are made for a congressional investigative committee (CPI) to be set up and its proponents scramble to start the procedure. The government resists because it fears that any such investigation will divert Congress´s attention from much-needed legislative changes. To do so, it demands that members of its own party toe the line and suborns allies from other parties by releasing funds for pet projects which will boost their popularity in their home areas. The result is that some of the zealots start backtracking and withdrawing their signatures and we move onto the next chapter.

Unfortunately for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, things did not go according to script in the latest scandal, which involves the Post Office, and a CPI will be established. Fourteen PT members from the House of Representatives and one PT Senator were among those who signed the call. The committee will have 16 members each from the Senate and House of Representatives. The main opposition parties, the PSDB and PFL, were quick to nominate the five members from the Senate they are entitled to and are aiming to obtain the position of chief investigator known as the “relator”. There is no doubt that they will try and prolong this affair in order to embarrass the government in the run up to next year´s presidential election. Should it go ahead then we can forget any meaningful legislation being passed by the end of this year and lots of politicking barracking and barnstorming.      

The irony is that the party involved at the center of the latest scandal is not the PT but its smaller ally, the PTB. The scandal centers on a manager at the Post Office who was secretly filmed telling two bogus businessmen that they could win contracts to provide services by paying bribes. He named Roberto Jefferson, president of the PTB, as being the in charge of a scheme which enriched him, his party and his cronies. Why should a politicians be involved in humdrum operations involving the Post Office you might ask. The answer is because, here in Brazil, political patronage is ubiquitous and the price of political support is to offer your comrade or ally a certain number of senior positions in state-owned or controlled companies or bodies. Once in power, these new bosses appoint their own supporters, mates, relatives and business partners and set about plundering the public purse.

These positions range from the board of director of Petrobras, the biggest company in Latin America, to electrical utilities and regulatory bodies. There are an estimated 19,000 of these so-called positions of confidence, probably the highest number in the democratic world. If each appointee, in turn, hires 10 to 20 new staff one can see the extent of the problem. These changes often lead to people with the technical knowledge and experience required for the position being fired and replaced by people who are completely unqualified.     

We will not go into the details here but, of course, the PTB denied the allegations and the manager, who was filmed pocketing R$3,000 offered as bribe, has retracted his statement. He said he had been showing off and the money he took had been for consultancy which he had intended carrying out. The PBT is also alleged to be involved in another scheme in which it demanded a monthly pay-off of R$400,000 from the state reinsurance monopoly, the RSB.   

PT Joins the Gravy Train
The whole episode shows that, despite its left-wing anti-corruption credentials, the PT is either unable or unwilling to cope with Brazil´s institutionalized corruption. In fact, the PT has shown that it can be as good as any other party in playing the game. First of all, PT members who are appointed to positions of confidence are expected to donate 10% of their salary to the party. Since the PT has grabbed the lion´s share, the party´s coffers must have already been swelled by the unwitting and unwilling taxpayer. The PT has also been smeared by two as yet unresolved scandals allegedly involving corruption – the murder of PT mayor, Celso Daniel, three years ago and the Waldemir Diniz case involving an aide to Lula´s chief of staff, Jose Dirceu, secretly filmed demanding a payback from a suspected criminal. The PBT´s Jefferson was quoted as saying that if he had to appear before the CPI then Dirceu and two other senior PT members would be sitting alongside him.

The opposition parties will make sure that the Daniel and Diniz cases are kept well to the fore. They will claim they are doing so for the public good but will fool no-one. People will not accept sermons and moralizing from members of a party like the PFL, whose best-known member, Antonio Carlos Magalhães, has been accused of involvement in scandals for decades.  

As for the PT, it has shown once again that it is simply not a party to be taken seriously. Dirceu, for example, was quoted as saying the allegations bordered on a coup. His Communist ally, Aldo Rebelo, who is Policy Coordinator claimed that the forces which had tried to overthrow former president Getulio Vargas, Juscelino Kubitschek and Jão Goulart were trying to destabilize the Lula government.

If Lula had been in Brasilia and not in the Far East when this scandal unraveled perhaps he might have averted this latest defeat in Congress. The government´s mishandling of relations with Congress has left the country in the hands of the embarrassingly incompetent Severino Cavalcanti who was elected chairman of the Lower House in protest at what deputies saw as the PT´s greed in grabbing too many positions for itself and the Executive´s arrogance. It should be recalled that the parties which voted for Cavalcanto included the PSDB and PFL.

One good thing from this latest affair has been a serious piece of journalism from the weekly magazine Veja which broke the story. In recent years this magazine´s coverage of politics has lacked depth and readers have been supplied with a stream of infotainment features on diets, film stars and fads. It was a Veja story which finally led to the impeachment and resignation of Fernando Collor de Mello in 1992.

(c) John Fitzpatrick 2005