Solon Brochado: Last week, the CPI that was set to investigate charges of bribe in the country’s Postal Service, and eventually led to the mensalão scandal, reached its expiration date. Being as it were nowhere near finished, the opposition launched a campaign to extend its life expectancy. The president then decided to play his cards at the Congress, promising funds for projects of congressmen who refused to sign the form asking for the CPIs extension.

With that, 66 representatives who were backing the proposition, changed their mind and withdrew their signatures. Unfortunately for the president, it wasn’t enough, and the opposition gathered all the needed signatures from congressmen. The result, according to Ricardo Noblat, the country’s most widely read political blogger, is death upon the administration.

There’s a body stretched on the ground

The balance after seven days of political crisis: one dead, 66 wounded and one diseased who sees his health deteriorating little by little. The dead is minister Antonio Palocci. His body is stretched out in the Esplanada dos Ministérios’ grass waiting for the rabecão [car used for the transportation of corpses]. It may not come. But not even then will Palocci rise from the horizontal position.

The 66 wounded are the representatives who signed the request to extend the expiration of the Postal Service’s CPI - and who, pressured by the government, withdrew their signatures in exchange for promises. They lost prestige and shame. They’ll lose votes. They’re furious and condemned to further thicken the line of those who sacrificed themselves in vain for the government’s sake.

The diseased is Lula. He maneuvered to detain the inquiry of frauds after saying he would never mess with the CPIs, and stimulated Brazilians to denounce irregularities. The maneuver was a resounding fiasco - one of the more astonishing ones ever since he’s been at the number one chair of the Republic.

Palocci died because he didn’t know or couldn’t stop from being revived his past as a municipal administrator conniving with the collection of bribes for the PT, and as a coordinator for the Lula campaign who was worried in gathering dirty money to pay for expenses. He’s not a victim of the past: he’s guilty for himself.

At this point, Lula hopes Palocci himself will sign his death certificate, just as minister José Dirceu signed his. Lula is a pragmatic politician who follows, on pure intuition, senator José Sarney’s maxim:

- In Brazil, a ruler’s main task is to survive.

It won’t be easy for him. At least, the CPIs will feed the political crisis up until april. Or maybe even june, if they don’t work during the Congress’ recess for the new year.

Fearing new revelations might compromise Lula’s dreams of reelection, which political forces will be willing, even then, to support him in the dark?

The PMDB will have its own candidate for the presidential sucession. The PFL will double team with the PSDB. Other than the PT and its eternal supporters PC do B and PSB, Lula will only be able to count on the mensalão bunch - PTB, PP and PL.

The “mensalão alliance” will be a sitting duck for adversaries.