Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

CHALLENGES 2005-2006: The Year of Innocence Lost in Brazil

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 29 2005 (IPS) - For many Brazilians, 2005 will be the year when corruption invaded national politics like never before, thanks to the scandal that erupted seven months ago at the heart of the ruling leftist Workers Party (PT), long viewed as a champion of ethical integrity.

This was “the year of disenchantment, of the loss of innocence,” in which the public realised that no political party, whether right or left, is free of corruption, said Maria Luiza Rossoni, a retired elementary school teacher from Sao Paulo.

But at the same time, Rossini told IPS, this episode has served as a “positive learning experience,” because the Brazilian population “has become more politicised over the course of six months than it normally would in 60 years,” and has begun to actively discuss the country’s problems and the shortcomings of its political institutions.

Sociologist Maria Brito, a civil servant in Rio de Janeiro, believes that “the left has suffered a major defeat,” because it has lost its reputation of being “less corrupt than the right,” and it could take several generations to restore that image.

The scandal exposed top leaders of the PT involved in acts of corruption that the leftist party had always condemned in others, thus tearing asunder the banner of political ethics it had held high throughout the 25 years since its founding.

As a result, the party once viewed as the most coherent, best organised and “most ideological” – in contrast to other political groupings geared more to the interests of the moment – has lost a third of its most loyal followers, according to a survey released Monday by the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo.

In December 2004, the PT enjoyed the support of 24 percent of the Brazilian public, the highest rating it had ever achieved and the culmination of a slow but steady rise in popularity. As of this month, its support rating has plunged to 16 percent, yet it still remains in first place among the country’s political parties, followed by the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) with only nine percent.

This leadership in the polls has only relative significance in a country where the public tends to vote for candidates more than for parties, although in the case of the PT, its percentage of support as measured by opinion polls has always been close to its total share of votes in legislative elections.

The corruption scandal and ensuing crisis, which has cast serious doubt on President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s chances for re-election in 2006, erupted in May, when a magazine and TV station divulged images of an official from the state-run postal service accepting 3,000 reals (some 1,290 dollars) as a kickback from a private company in exchange for a supply contract.

The official involved in the bribery scheme – which was exposed as result of two private firms fighting over post office contracts – was actually a Brazilian Labour Party (PTB) appointee. As a member of the alliance formed by the PT with other parties in order to control a majority in Congress, the PTB had the right to designate directors of the state-run company.

The president of the PTB at the time, Roberto Jefferson, felt betrayed by the PT and reacted by telling the press that the ruling party had paid monthly bribes to lawmakers from allied parties in order to ensure their votes for key PT-sponsored bills in Congress.

Subsequent investigations revealed that at least 55 million reals (24 million dollars) had been distributed among dozens of lawmakers and party leaders.

The scandal snowballed. Three congressional inquiry commissions were established to look into the allegations of corruption, and over 50 government and state-run company officials were fired or stepped down, including two of Lula’s closest aides, former chief of staff José Dirceu and former communications secretary Luiz Gushiken.

Other government ministers were obliged to relinquish their portfolios, but in order to take over the PT leadership positions left vacant by former party leaders forced to step down over accusations of irregularities.

Of the 19 lawmakers from four parties directly implicated in the bribes-for-votes scheme, four voluntarily stepped down to avoid being found guilty by a congressional inquiry, which would entail an eight-year ban from holding public office.

This fate has so far befallen only two of the 19, Jefferson and Dirceu, who returned to his seat in Congress after resigning as chief of staff in order to defend himself from the allegations.

Another two of the accused were acquitted, while the remaining 11 are still awaiting a final decision from the Ethics Board and the lower house.

The congressional inquiry commissions have essentially turned into electoral battle grounds, where the primary objective is to score points for the October 2006 elections, instead of identifying the sources and beneficiaries of the illegal funds used to pay off lawmakers and parties over recent years.

Some party leaders have sworn that they were totally unaware of the acts committed by those immediately under them, something highly implausible given the hierarchical nature of Brazilian political parties and the government itself. Some profess repentance for their past errors, but a good many more have maintained that raising or using undeclared – and thus illegal – election campaign funds does not really constitute corruption.

“Everybody does it” is a justification that has even been voiced by Lula, although he quickly went on to deny that such practices had been used in the 2002 election campaign that brought him to power.

But it was former PT treasurer Delubio Soares himself who admitted that with the assistance of advertising executive Marcos Valerio de Souza, he had transferred 55 million reals to political parties allied with the PT to “pay off campaign debts.”

The explanation offered by both – that these “off-the-books” funds had come from bank loans – is difficult to believe for most observers.

Nevertheless, the two parliamentary inquiry commissions still undertaking investigations have yet to confirm the strong suspicions that these irregular transactions involved much larger sums than those already uncovered, and that the sources of at least part of these funds were state companies and their respective pension funds.

In the meantime, the scandal has gradually fizzled out, largely thanks to the slow progress made in the investigations. This has led to the impression that lawmakers have little interest in seeing out this process to its final consequences, with the corresponding punishment for those involved in these irregularities.

The acquittal of parliamentary Deputy Romeu Queiroz this month, despite proof that he was a recipient of the illegal funds under investigation, confirmed the lack of commitment among members of Congress to genuinely wiping out corruption in politics.

Despite some tense moments, Lula has managed to weather the scandal and avoid impeachment, although this was definitely an option. An opposition leader publicly declared that he would rather make the president “bleed” politically in order to defeat him in next October’s election.

In any event, Lula has not escaped totally unscathed, as reflected by his plunge in popularity. In fact, he has begun to perform so poorly in public opinion polls that there is a real danger he would not succeed in being re-elected, and this has led to a delay in his decision of whether or not to run again.

The apparent lack of interest among the country’s leadership in uncovering the truth and confronting corruption head-on is demonstrated by the lack of measures to eliminate “the roots” of the problem, such as cutting back the 22,000 political posts whose occupants are designated by each new administration, remarked Claudio Weber Abramo, executive secretary of Transparency Brazil, the local branch of the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International.

Nor has a new law been passed to adopt public financing of election campaigns, a strategy that many politicians have recommended as one that would curb corruption, although Abramo told IPS that it would be largely ineffective and has merely been proposed to “distract attention.”

In next year’s elections, the PT will be targeted for heavy attack by the opposition as a result of this year’s scandal, but none of Brazil’s major political parties can portray themselves as free of sin in this regard.

The PT’s main rival, the PSDB, also lost its president to the scandal, when Senator Eduardo Azeredo was proven guilty of using illegal campaign funds.

But as Mario Brito pointed out, the fact that no single party holds a monopoly on ethics means that electoral debate will at least be more objective, with a greater emphasis on the proposals put forward by the different parties and candidates to solve the country’s economic and social problems.