Banana Pundits

Solon Brochado: New developments in the Castro-Lula front. First, the Cuban government has officially denied that it donated US$ 3 million for Lula’s campaign. The opposition, on the other hand, sees the opportunity for a new attack on the Workers’ Party, and intends to broaden their front even more.

Cuba denies US$ 3 million donation to the PT

The Cuban government this saturday denied having sent US$ 3 million for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s presidential campaign, as reported in “Veja” magazine.

On a note released in Havana, the Cuban government says it is a piece of slandering and asserts it never interfered with Brazilian internal affairs. “The Cuban government blames this propagandistic maneuver on the agressive imperialist plans against Cuba and Lula.”

According to the note, the accusation “was made in advance of the north-american president George W. Bush’s arrival in Brazil. The objective is to change focus from the ever bigger problems he is facing, pressed by corruption investigations on important leaders of his party and among his closer circle of collaborators”.

The accusation was also denied by the Cuban embassador in Brazil, Pedro Núñez Mosquera. To him, “those who orchestrated this campaign of lies on Cuba and the Brazilian government seek to endanger the bilateral relations among the two countries, characterized by fraternal dialogue, mutual respect, and not interfering with our nations’ internal affairs”.

(more…)

Solon Brochado: Brazil’s political crisis may, as we say here, end up in pizza, but it is surely going beyond my wildest expectations. It’s been only a week since the referendum, and everyone’s attention is already back at Congress. And with good reason, too.

It seems everyone is CPI-happy [Parliamentary Inquiry Comissions] these days. First we had a CPI to investigate a bribing scheme in the postal service. During that investigation, rep. Roberto Jefferson blew open the mensalão scandal, on the government’s vote-buying. Then, the opposition decided that deserved a CPI of its own, while the government said it should all be part of the same investigation.

The new CPI was opened, and has been turning up all kinds of frauds and money laundering schemes imaginable. During all this time, a third CPI, dating back to the government’s first scandal (involving a close aide to Lula’s Chief of Staff, minister José Dirceu) has been going on.

Now, the opposition has decided to ask for a fourth CPI, that would focus on the use of undeclared money during the presidential campaigns of 1998 and 2002. The senate’s leader, sen. Renan Calheiros (PMDB-AL) said he will ask for its opening. But only a day after the PSDB’s leader, sen. Arthur Virgílio (AM), presented the proposal, the opposition has realized the idea backfired and is trying to prevent it.

It turns out that any money laundering scheme used by petistas during Lula’s 2002 campaign will be investigated in the mensalão’s CPI. So, the new CPI would only investigate the accusations involving PSDB’s former president, sen. Eduardo Azeredo (MG), who is said to have used undeclared money to fund Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s 1998 campaign. And also the proposal is being seen as a maneuver from the opposition to retaliate this accusations.

The Workers’ Party, in the meantime, has been discussing whether or not to ask for Azeredo’s annulment. They say the PSDB and PFL have been using the CPIs to paralyze the country and the administration, in a political maneuver to undermine Lula’s reelection chances. And some in the party think asking for Azeredo’s annulment, at this point (and with so many internal disputes), would seem like a political reprisal.

As if all this intrigue and hurly burly weren’t fun enough, it seems rep. José Dirceu, Lula’s former Chief of Staff, has managed to bring the judiciary along for the ride. Everytime he’s mentioned by the Chamber’s Ethics Council, Dirceu files a lawsuit at the Supreme Federal Court [STF] challenging their decisions and proceedings. So far, the STF has been overturning quite a few of the Council’s decisions, which is wearying congressmen.

According to Folha de S. Paulo, some are even denouncing the STF’s conduct as meddling with legislative power. Even Dirceu’s lawyers are getting worried, says the newspaper, since these are the congressmen that will vote his annulment, if it ever comes to that. So it might not be a good idea to upset them this way.

Even so, next week should see a new avalanche of lawsuits filed by Dirceu. And maybe the beggining of a fourth CPI. But congressmen assure us that none of this is compromising Congress’ usual operation.

Solon Brochado: It was published right after the referendum’s official result, but I couldn’t get to translate it before. NoMínimo’s Villas-Bôas Corrêa has an interesting article on the general meaninglessness of this consultation, as is evident from the lack of actual legislative response to its result. He also makes some good points with regards to pork-spending with daily expenses for public servant’s trips abroad.

(more…)

Solon Brochado: Obviously, the Workers’ Party national president, Ricardo Berzoini, didn’t have good things to say about Veja’s story Cisco mentioned on the last post. But while his PSDB and PFL conspiracy theory is what you would expect from someone in his position, it must be said that, ever since Lula took office, Veja has been practicing the worst kind of partisan journalism you could expect from such a renowned magazine.

(more…)

Cisco Costa: Veja, Brazil’s main weekly news mag, has quite a scoop this week: Lula’s campaign received money from Cuba. According to the story, three million dollars were sent in 2002 and transported around the country in whisky boxes. The story is too large, so I will only translate the final paragraph and, after the jump, a short account of it by Folha de São Paulo.

This is the last paragraph, and it explains why the news, if confirmed, is even more important than it sounds:

Law 9096, approved in 1995, says that a political party is forbidden from receiving resources from overseas. If this occurs, the party is subject to having its register canceled by the Electoral Justice, meaning the party will have to close down. The candidate of this party — in this case, president Lula — cannot be legally blamed, since he has been certified as elected for a long time. Receiving foreign money, however, is not that simple. “This is the most serious thing there is”, says professor Walter Costa Porto, a specialist in electoral law and former minister of the Supreme Electoral Court [in Portuguese, Tribunal Superior Eleitoral, or “TSE”]. “It’s so serious, so incredibly serious, that it’s the first of the four cases the law says will lead to the discharge of a political party’s register. It’s an assault to the country’s sovereignty. It’s lethal”, says the former minister. If official investigations confirm that the PT received Cuban money, and the political party has its register canceled, the Brazilian political scenery will be wiped out by a Katrina: this is because PT members, without party, would not be able to run for anything in the 2006 election. Not even president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

This last bit needs a bit of explaining. Because Brazilian politicians would often change political affiliations, frequently after being bribed to do so, the electoral law forbids someone to run for anything if he has changed political parties during a certain period before the election. 2006’s cutoff date was September 2005. Since, in Brazil, one cannot run for anything if he is not registered in a political party — there are no write-ins or independent candidates — if the ruling Workers’ Party’s register was canceled, every single one of its members would be legally forbidden from running for next year’s general elections for President, Governor, Federal and State representatives and 1/3 of the Senate.

Needless to say, as unlikely as it is that this would happen, the very possibility that it can happen is a very big deal.

(more…)

Solon Brochado: After about a year of the Lula administration, some of the leftmost members of the PT went into a collision course with the Executive power on bills they deemed “too liberal”. The result was some senators and representatives were expelled, and decided to start a far-left party, called PSOL (Socialism and Freedom Party).

When petistas all over the country were shocked with the administration’s entanglements in the vote-buying scandal that triggered a crisis that’s still to pass, a good part of those utopian voters, who elected Lula in the hopes of a magical transformation of the country, turned to PSOL as the bearers of truth. After all, they stood by their principles, even when it meant being expelled from the party they had helped to start some twenty years before.

Now, a PSOL senator has been charged with collecting 40% of his employees’ income. He says it’s a conspiracy engendered by the PT administration currently on the government of Acre. At any rate, it should be interesting to see how the PSOL handles their first political scandal.

(more…)

Solon Brochado: One of my main restrictions regarding PT administrations, historically, has been its Rooseveltian policy of using the State as a job-creating machine. I really can’t say this is evidence the formula has reached its limit, but considering the administration’s current political situation, it certainly is no good news for Lula.

(more…)

Solon Brochado: This is old news and not really important in any way. But the idea of nine oxes running loose on the streets of São Paulo seemed so funny to me that I just had to post it.

(more…)

Solon Brochado: You invite a few underage friends to your house by the beach. They gulp some drinks and decide to go for a stroll by the beach, without you. After a while, they decide to call you to pick them up and you, with no patience for a couple of giggly and inebriated girls, tells them to find their way home.

Seems like a reasonable conduct, right? Not to judge Iledete Veríssimo, from Ipojuca, in Pernambuco. She sentenced a 22-year-old student to two years and nine months in prison for allowing two teenage girls to “ingest alcoholic beverages” while they were staying at his house in 2003. The two girls ended up being murdered after hitchhiking from the beach later the same day.

(more…)

Solon Brochado: With the announcement of the official result of the referendum (63.94% of valid votes against the prohibition on the commerce of firearms and ammunition), some supporters of the “no” vote decided to hold a celebration in the streets of Rio de Janeiro.

What started as a celebration, though, turned into a confrontation after “yes” supporters started cursing the demonstrators, and threatened to throw a rock at a car carrying “no” paraphernalia. I guess it’s a good thing the lady with the rock was in favor of banning guns, and didn’t believe in violence as a way of solving anything.

(more…)