Solon Brochado: To start our doubleheader on the president’s interview last monday, I have translated Guilherme Fiuza’s op-ed, that says the president was adamant in denying what everyone knows is the truth. And in doing that, he continued to not talk to the press, just repeating tired lines as if he was making a public adress.
The return of the demi-God
The mensalão doesn’t exist. End of story. It was president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who said that, during his interview to the “Roda Viva” show. And Lula’s truths, possibly due to some divine gift, have the power to hover over facts, intact, indisputable. You can’t, therefore, argue with such a guy. Lula has won.
It doesn’t matter that an account from Marcos Valério’s SMP&B agency at the Banco Rural has supplied politicians from several parties, including the PT, with withdrawals throughout various months in a sum that totals over 20 million reais, all verified, even leading to some congressmen’s resignations, inclunding PT’s former leader Paulo Rocha, and the opening of some others’ impeachment processes, including former president of the Chamber, João Paulo Cunha, also from the PT. Lula has the mysterious gift of keeping at large from confronting the facts. If he speaks, it is said and done. The mensalão doesn’t exist, end of story.
This and other evidences that Delúbio Soares, José Dirceu’s right arm and man of trust for the federal government, irrigated the government’s parliamentary base, notedly the PL and PP, with resources provided by the lobbyist Marcos Valério, in operations that are known, confessed to and exhaustively mentioned in the news, mysteriously disappear when Lula starts an interview. He’s convinced there’s no mensalão, and the avalanche of evidences seems to shrink in shame before the presidential certainty.
Undeclared money for Lula’s campaign is also an evidence that dissolves itself in air one of these times. Duda Mendonça confessed he was paid by the PT through an offshore company, apart from any accounting. But never mind that. Lula said at TV Cultura that that’s a problem for Duda Mendonça. But wouldn’t it also be a problem for the PT, that proposed for the lobbyist to be paid on the side, and fulfilled the illegal operation? Money that flows at large from the law isn’t the famous caixa dois? It was, until the moment when the president declares he’s convinced it isn’t. Then his truth is olimpically imposed, safe from the contradictory.
Lula’s magic power of releasing his truths above the facts was proved, also, in the president’s references to Roberto Jefferson. Lula decreed: in truth I tell you, Jefferson was impeached because he couldn’t prove the existence of the mensalão. Even the lapel microphones should know Jefferson wasn’t impeached for that reason. Jefferson was impeached because he confessed to tráfico de influência [literally “influence trafficking”, which is to use your standing to illicitly force someone to change his/her opinion on something] and receiving illegal funding for electoral campaigns. But Lula’s theory sustained itself, undaunted, under the spotlights of “Roda Viva”: Jefferson was impeached because he didn’t prove the existence of the mensalão. Therefore, the mensalão doesn’t exist. Amen, president.
The invisible magnetic field that protects Lula from the unpleasantness of life also saved him from having to give explanations about Luiz Gushiken. The super-minister that fell in disgrace, charged by the Tribunal de Contas [the Accounting Court] of interfering in public biddings in favor of Marcos Valério’s agency, wouldn’t show up to pull the president’s feet. But if the former minister’s ghost were to stubbornly appear, there wouldn’t be a problem. Lula would say he was convinced that companheiro Gushiken is innocent. And the talk would be over.
The same way when the subject was José Dirceu. He’s a holy man. At the slightest sign of distrust, Lula releases his definitive and absolute motto: there are no evidences against him. And in a magical pass, there’s nothing else to raise against Dirceu, since the president has decreed the evidences – just like the mensalão - do not exist. Obviously, the fact that Delúbio and Sílvio Pereira, the men who provenly triangulated with Valério in distributing dirty money, also fully documented and confessed to, were chosen men, directed and protected by José Dirceu is of no importance. Also of no importance are all testimonial evidences by secretaries, ex-wives and Valério himself, to the extent that they all answered to José Dirceu. Lula said there’s nothing against Dirceu. End of story.
It would even be tiresome to insist in the episode of financial supply from Telemar to Lula’s son’s company. It is another magical subject, which mysteriously orbits the focal point, without touching it. The president says it’s about a private company, therefore a private matter. Of course, what really matters, in this case, is the fact the aforesaid private company is a concessionaire of a public service, i.e., directly subordinate to gubernatorial decisions – from the tariffs they have the right to practice, to the market they have the right to explore. But these details fall apart before the presidential magic.
Lula even said he didn’t understand the criticism to his unwillingness to attend the press, arguing he makes daily pronouncements. The country is forced to concur. It is now clear that a Lula interview and a Lula pronouncement are, practically, the same thing.
