POLITICS-BRAZIL: Key Senate Leaders Face Ban from Politics

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 23 2001 (IPS) - Three of the leaders of Brazil’s governing coalition are facing the prospect of losing their seats in the Senate and being banned from politics for eight years due to scandals over corruption and violations of parliamentary secrecy norms.

The crisis in the Senate, coming on top of the continued economic instability in neighbouring Argentina, dealt a further blow to Brazil’s weakened currency, the real, which has lost 15 percent of its value against the dollar so far this year, forcing the Central Bank to intervene in the market on several occasions.

The latest corruption scandal could lead to an upheaval in the coalition backing President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and make governance difficult during his last 20 months in office, thus bolstering the chances of a triumph by the left in the 2002 elections.

The three lawmakers on the rocks are key Senate leaders representing the three major parties in the ruling coalition: Senate president Jader Barbalho; his predecessor in that post Antonio Carlos Magalhaes; and the leader of the government bloc in the Senate until last Thursday, José Roberto Arruda.

Senate president Barbalho, who is also the head of the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), faces charges that he misappropriated public funds since he was elected governor of the northern state of Para in 1982 and began to exercise a direct influence over decisions involving development funds for the Amazon jungle region.

New evidence against Barbalho has piled up over the past few weeks, such as checks bearing his signature and proof of his participation in companies that committed fraud with subsidised official funds.

However, the senator refuses to resign from any of his posts.

Meanwhile, former Senate president Magalhaes, and Arruda, the Senate leader of the Social Democracy Party until last Thursday, could be temporarily exiled from politics for supposed violations of parliamentary secrecy norms.

The two legislators are accused of tampering with the Senate’s electronic secret voting system to find out how their colleagues voted in the Jun 28, 2000 session that decided to give Senator Luiz Estévao the boot.

Estévao was banned from politics for having participated, through his companies, in the misappropriation of 169 million reais (80 million dollars) earmarked for the construction of a courthouse in Sao Paulo from 1992 to 1998.

Magalhaes and Arruda ordered technicians to tamper with the electronic voting system, the former director of the Senate Data Processing Centre, Regina Peres Borges, said last Thursday before the Council on Parliamentary Ethics and Decorum, which is investigating the case.

Senator Robeu Tuma, a political commentator with a highly respected career as a police commissioner, said Peres Borges’ “solid” testimony “ruined” Magalhaes and Arruda.

Peres Borges admitted to violating the electronic voting panel with the help of three other technicians, and the details she provided convinced the senators as well as public opinion that she was telling the truth.

Experts say the two lawmakers will likely be banished from politics for “lack of parliamentary decorum” if Peres Borges’ testimony is corroborated, because they also reportedly committed perjury by denying that the incident took place.

The Council of Parliamentary Ethics and Decorum decided to investigate after Magalhaes stated, in a private conversation with three members of the Public Ministry (Brazil’s office of the public prosecutor) in February, that he knew how the senators had voted in the session that decided to throw Estévao out of the Senate.

The conversation, taped by one of the prosecutors, was partially published by the local magazine Isto , which triggered the parliamentary probe.

Arruda also committed an indiscretion, commenting to other lawmakers just minutes before the Jun 28 vote that the electronic system did not guarantee secrecy, according to Senator José Eduardo Dutra of the opposition Workers’ Party.

Arruda was keen on seeing Estévao banned from politics, as the legislator was his political rival in Brasilia, and his possible adversary in the elections for governor of the Brazilian capital in 2002.

The investigation will continue this week with fresh testimony from Senate officials and a face to face meeting between Magalhaes, Arruda and Peres Borges.

The chairman of the Council of Parliamentary Ethics and Decorum, Senator Ramez Tebet, said the body should reach a decision within the next month.

The fact that Magalhaes and Arruda are the heads of the Liberal Front Party and Social Democracy Party, respectively, makes it more likely for the legislature to banish both of them, because the political balance within the coalition would be affected less than if just one of them were expelled.

That also means a greater risk for Barbalho, the head of the third large governing coalition party, the PMDB, because “corruption is more serious than tampering with a voting panel,” as Socialist Senator Saturnino Braga put it.

Cardoso said he was opposed to any political deals aimed at preventing punitive actions, and underlined that the cases were exclusively up to the legislature. His government, however, could suffer consequences if it loses key members of the coalition.