Talk Elections

For the whole of this year I have read article after article and listened to lecture after lecture on Brazil's mediocre economic performance (I'm surprised I haven't seen you at them, they're very informative), and have wondered, if, or really when, a movement like this would ever emerge, and lo and behold it has.

Now, the interesting thing is what this movement means. I recall looking at the first headlines and stories from Veja, Folha, et al, and they were calling the first protesters in SP "vandals", "rascals" and the like, but when they started to gain an anti-establishment tinge all of a sudden the media was talking up how the "activists" had valid concerns (which of course they do). Now, I'm openly right wing and probably more fond of the PSDB than is healthy for a foreigner, but it reeks of opportunism and an attempt to undermine the government... but perhaps it deserves to be undermined.

Now the big question is what happens next? The games will go ahead, that it certain, for it not to happen would be a major embarrassment for Brazil. These may be the biggest protests since Collor was impeached, but I don't think that's going to happen with this government (but hey, you never know). So it really comes down to the election next year, unless things really heat up.

The real question whether voters will recognize Marina, Aecio, or Eduardo Campos as representing real change or just "more of the same". Now I happen to think FHC was more transformative than Lula, and really what is happening is that the PT is no longer able to coast on the reforms made in the 90s- and they don't know what to do. But clearly I hold a minority position; if you look at both of Serra's campaigns he made a ham-handed attempt to "out-left" Lula and Dilma, which shows how uncommon it is.

These next 14 months will be huge for Dilma. She knows that cheap populism isn't enough anymore. We more or less have a middle class society now who now want quality education, healthcare and infrastructure. Serious attempts of reform is needed. The big one now is the concession of airports, roads and railways that will happen in the next 6 months. If that goes through, and construction starts next year with a great increase in investment that will give her some breathing room. She will also need to push and sign an anti corruption bill that most likely will be passed. Brazil's congress currently has many criminals "serving" the public, they need to be tried and go to jail. However at the moment the most pressing matter is happening at municipal level where mayors are suspending increases in transportation fares and even reducing prices. That will be the first thing, followed by the corruption bill. But we definitely need some legislation on tax reform, desperately needed.

What I'd like to see is someone who again challenges the high-tax, big government policies that we see today, which is what is holding back growth. I recall reading that many poor people were paying more in tax than they were getting from the Bolsa Familia. So it isn't even helping the poor. I could go on and on about structural problems, the electoral system, corruption, but then this would be too long to read.

But hey, FHC is "only" 82 years old... whaddya think?

The former Petrobras director Paulo Roberto Costa and currency exchanger Alberto Youssef indicated during an inquiry by the Brazilian Court of Justice that the treasurer of the Worker's Party (PT), João Vaccari Neto, received money from works carried out at the state-run company.

"The connection was different with him", Costa said at the inquiry last Wednesday, October 8th, in Curitiba, state of Paraná.

Vaccari denied the statements and said that all donations made to the Workers' party are lawful.

According to the deponents, three political parties received kickbacks as part of the scheme: the Workers' Party (PT), The Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) and Progressive Party (PP).

The currency exchanger said that the middle man at PMDB was lobbyist Fernando Soares and he himself took and it was also him who managed the bribe destined to PP.

So much is going wrong in Brazil that it is hard to keep up. For years, critics have accused the government of incompetence. Now its actions are looking catastrophic – so much so that there are good reasons to think President Dilma Rousseff, who began a second four-year term only on January 1, may not last much longer.

Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets this weekend, calling for the impeachment of recently re-elected President Dilma Rousseff.

The nationwide protests were peaceful, but for observers with knowledge of Brazil's political past, there was a sinister element to them that cannot be ignored.

In sign after sign, middle-class protesters called for the military to wrest control of the country from Rousseff's Brazilian Workers' Party (PT).

Marlon Aymes, a protester seen holding a sign that read "Army, Navy and Air Force. Please save us once again of [sic] communism," told The Guardian:

"They [The PT] are in power for 16 years. That is like a dictatorship ... In 1964 the military of Brazil took a stand against a president who was close to the Kremlin. Today, the PT is in a group that wants a Bolivarian socialist model across Latin America. Common people are protesting and calling for impeachment, but congress is too corrupt to approve that so we need military intervention."

It isn't difficult to see why Brazilians are calling foul, but to call for military rule, however, is a chilling reminder of what has often been a ready alternative in Latin America. Brazil was controlled by a violent military junta from 1964 to 1985. It was that junta that tortured the sitting president when she was a young activist. Calling for the return of military control is a clear signal that some in Brazilian society feel the democratic process has failed.

They have no fear of being accused of inciting a coup. Either they will promote the largest protest against the administration of President Dilma Rousseff since her re-election in November, or they will be responsible for the failure of a movement which aims to shake up Brazilian politics.

On March 15, marches are scheduled in more than 200 Brazilian cities. They are likely to draw young liberals, entrepreneurs who preach radical reduction of the state, and even those who advocate a military coup.

Groups that defend a military coup have participated in protests against Rousseff. In Rio, for example, the group Legalistas has held gatherings. "The way things are, I don't see any other solution", says air force reserve sergeant Tôni Oliveira, 58.

The comparison with the groups which advocate the return of the military regime irritates Come to the Streets and the MBL. They criticize the media, which they accuse of tarring them with the same brush.

No group would estimate turnout for the protests. Internally, the number being considered is 100,000.

Where does the money come from for all of this? Each group has its own methods. The MBL accepts donations and receives a few cents from YouTube each time its videos are viewed. Come to the Streets relies on contributions from its members.

Marcelo Reis, from the group Revoltados, has found another way to raise money. Owner of the most popular website amongst the organizers of the protest, he is selling a "protest kit", including a T-shirt, cap and pro-impeachment stickers.

Revoltados has advocated a military coup, but Reis says that today no senior members of the group believe that this is the solution. "We want democratic rules. Impeachment is in the constitution", he says.

Did PROS stop existing?

I don't see how she isn't removed from office, regardless of the truth.

3) How would you (or any of the other Brazilians) change the electoral system to fix the broken system?

A Final Defense of Dilma Rousseff

BY Brian Winter | May 11, 2016
Back in March 2014, when the Petrobras scandal was just getting started, some of President Dilma Rousseff’s top aides saw a golden opportunity to kill the investigation – or at least badly wound it.

Márcio Anselmo, the Federal Police deputy in charge of the probe, had given an interview (which can be seen here) to Jornal Nacional, Brazil’s most-watched news program. On-camera and on-the-record, Anselmo and others laid out the main points of the case, which would soon become notorious: A former Petrobras board member who had accepted a Land Rover as a bribe, the money launderer whose plea-bargain testimony would prove key, and the sordid connections with some of the country’s biggest construction companies.

Everyone in Brasília knew the stakes were huge. The election was just six months away, and Rousseff was facing a tight race. But some ministers were convinced the TV interview was actually a blessing in disguise. They believed Anselmo had broken a dictatorship-era statute that, they argued, prohibited Federal Police officials from discussing cases in progress with the media. Fire him, they urged Rousseff. Fire him now and attack the investigators for using the media to selectively leak information damaging to the government.

To their utter astonishment, Rousseff refused. “I’ll never do that,” she replied dismissively, according to someone who was in the room. “I’m not afraid of this investigation. It has nothing to do with me!”

I covered Rousseff closely for five years as a reporter, and if there’s a more “Dilma” anecdote out there, I don’t know it. This one has it all: her blustery arrogance, her refusal to listen to even her closest aides, and her apparent inability to understand just how much trouble she was in, right to the very end. But it also has what may prove to be Rousseff’s saving grace in the annals of Brazilian history: her refusal, for the most part, to stand in the way of corruption investigations at Petrobras and elsewhere, even when it became clear they would contribute to her demise.

Today, Brazil’s Congress will probably vote to remove Rousseff from office, almost certainly for good. She will leave under disputed circumstances, with the corruption scandals as the clear subtext, though not the official cause, for her impeachment. She will depart with a near-single-digit approval rating, primary responsibility for Brazil’s worst recession in at least 80 years, and very few genuine friends at home or abroad. And yet, Rousseff also appears to deserve some credit for the main achievement of this otherwise horrid decade in Brazil: the consolidation of rule of law under its young democracy, and the notion that the corrupt will be investigated, convicted and jailed, no matter how powerful they may be.

Acknowledging Rousseff’s role in this is controversial, in part because her behavior here, too, was not impeccable. Indeed, she may soon face charges for obstruction of justice for appointing her mentor and predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as a minister in her final days in government – an act that was almost certainly designed to make Lula less susceptible to imprisonment, since ministers enjoy special legal protections. Time may tell, but Lula’s appointment seemed to me less an attempt to hinder the investigation itself, and more like an act of personal loyalty and realpolitik, based on the belief that only “The Man” (as President Obama surely regrets describing him) had the negotiating prowess to save her government from its death throes.

The truth is that, starting in early 2014, Rousseff had numerous opportunities to hinder, or at least delay, the investigation of Petrobras and other high-profile cases. The argument against Anselmo, the Federal Police deputy, seems in retrospect to be flimsy at best – but in any case Rousseff let the moment  pass, and Anselmo remains in the post today. Alternatively, Rousseff could have declined in 2015 to reappoint the attorney general, Rodrigo Janot, who had already shown he would go along with the so-called Lava Jato probe. She not only retained Janot, but publicly reaffirmed his “autonomy” – a mandate he would soon seize upon by requesting charges against Lula and an investigation of Rousseff herself. Rousseff also could have put someone less apt to cooperate with prosecutors in charge of the Federal Police, or actively pressed her allies on the Supreme Court to strip Curitiba-based Judge Sergio Moro of the Petrobras case on the argument that judges in Rio de Janeiro, where the company is based, were better-suited to hear the case. Finally, she could have started attacking Moro as biased much earlier and more aggressively than she ultimately did – which would have been risky, but could have put Moro on the defensive and ultimately limited the scope of his investigation.

All along, Rousseff had senior figures within the Workers’ Party whispering in her ear, telling her to do all of these things. But instead, as recently as January of this year, she was publicly celebrating Lava Jato as a necessary purge of practices that had existed in Brazil for decades, if not centuries. “I have to emphasize the fact that Brazil needs this investigation,” she told Folha de S.Paulo, limiting her criticism to procedural “points outside the curve,” such as a supposed reliance on hearsay in plea bargains. Indeed, Rousseff didn’t begin to vilify the investigation in earnest until a few weeks ago, when Moro released wiretapped conversations between her and Lula. And there… well, let’s say she may have had a point.

There are those who will never give Rousseff any credit for letting Brazil’s judiciary do their jobs. Well of course she did, they say. What choice did she have? OK. But ask yourself the following: Would leaders elsewhere in Latin America have done the same? Let’s leave Venezuela out of this, for the sake of argument. What about recent governments in Argentina? Or Mexico? What about Brazil’s fellow BRICS? For that matter, what can we expect from the incoming Michel Temer government in Brazil? One irony of Rousseff’s impeachment is that it has brought increased fears of political interference in the Petrobras investigation. Temer has said there’s nothing to fear, but prosecutors in Curitiba and Brasília privately say they are preparing for setbacks. Unbelievable as it sounds, they may end up missing Rousseff most of all.

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So, the final question: Why did she do it?

Why did Rousseff stand by as her government fell apart?

Some of the explanation probably lies in her origin story. Not the one we’ve all heard about – the Dilma Rousseff of her early twenties, the guerrilla who endured jail and torture, the “Braveheart” of her campaign jingles. No, I’m talking about Dilma Rousseff the adult, after her release from prison in 1973, the one who undertook a much less glamorous life as an economist and public servant. This is the  bespectacled energy policy wonk who just 20 years ago was editing an obscure magazine called Economic Indicators, and never showed any interest in politics or higher office. This Rousseff’s only passion was for numbers – performance targets, spreadsheets, the arcane day-to-day business of government.

Even after Lula ran out of other options and plucked her from relative obscurity to be his chief of staff and ultimately his successor, even after the plastic surgery and makeover that preceded Rousseff’s run for president – her first campaign of any kind – she still had no time for anything but numbers. Unfortunately for Rousseff, this precluded her from making any friends, in Congress or elsewhere, who might have protected her toward the end. But it also made her intolerant of corruption – not for moral reasons perhaps, but because it might keep the numbers in the G column on Excel from lining up correctly. As such, from the very beginning of Rousseff’s government, when a minister or other aide was accused of graft or fraud, she made it clear that person was expected to resign. Six ministers left under such circumstances during her first year in office alone. This was a radical departure from the Lula years, and it contributed to a new culture that ultimately resulted in Lava Jato.

Of course, there are other, much less flattering explanations. Indeed, it’s clear that Rousseff, isolated and politically tone-deaf, failed until it was too late to fully grasp the threat to her own survival. Her choice of words when confronted over Anselmo in early 2014 – “It has nothing to do with me!” – was revealing. The Rousseff-as-earnest-technocrat theory also has a major hole in it: If she was so focused on numbers, then how did she miss the sheer scale of the robbery at Petrobras, especially during the years she was energy minister and the chair of the company’s board?  

To me, the answer probably lies in the simplest, most damning criticism of Rousseff: She just wasn’t that good. Mediocre to the end, and overwhelmed by a position she was never qualified to hold, she consistently failed to ask the right questions of her aides or her party. She also harbored antiquated economic philosophies, believed she could dictate the day-to-day business of the country (including parts of the private sector) by personal fiat, and alienated most people she worked with through her often boorish, insulting behavior. Her presidency will go down as a case study in why leadership matters – why a democracy as big and complex as Brazil cannot simply be handed over to anyone and put on “automatic pilot.”

But yes, Rousseff had virtues, too. Even her enemies concede she was personally honest, and stole nothing for herself. In a region where many leaders spend their waking hours scheming about how to make themselves or their friends richer, or exact revenge on their enemies, Rousseff seemed genuinely focused on tackling Brazil’s still-legendary poverty and inequality. And in the end, any desire she had to stay in office or protect her party seems to have been outweighed by a long-term concern for Brazil and the need to build functioning institutions. That, I think, should count for something.

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazilian media are reporting that the country's federal police have asked embattled President Michel Temer 84 questions related to an investigation of corruption allegations against him...