Gilberto Dimenstein weighs in on the optimistic team. While not a particularly striking op-ed, it is always a good thing to see such reasoning on the pages of such a widely read newspaper like the Folha de S. Paulo.

Severino is a great teacher

The resignation of Severino Cavalcanti, who at this point becomes a great teacher of Brazilian reality, is expected at any moment.

In his disaster, he teaches how the country matured to a point where it can’t stand this kind of unqualified people boasting so much power. He thought himself ruling not in Brasília, but in his hometown on the Northeast’s countryside, where cumplicities are bought.

He teaches that congressmen and senators can elect a Severino, motivated by the worst reasons, but are later forced to withdraw. Remember, if on one hand he benefited from the low clergy, on the other he got precious votes from the PSDB. Toucans might say they didn’t know about the rascality, but they did know about Severino’s corporatist agenda. Everyone, in these episodes, comes out scathed.

He also teaches how clumsy a government can be. Severino’s victory is much more a fruit of Lula and his advisers’ hodgepodge than of the congressman’s abilities.

The best lesson is that Severino, in his shallow pragmatism, may even be a part of Brazilian mentality, but one that is having an ever harder time to impose itself. That’s why Maluf and his son Flávio are in jail, why Lula will have a hard time getting reelected, and why nobody knows whether the PT will be able to recover.

Only the uninformed think all these lessons are reason to be pessimistic. They’re reason to celebrate a new country that’s rising.