Banana Pundits

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.

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Solon Brochado: The whole “bloggers vs. big media” battle that’s been going on in the US is meaningless in Brazil. If someone did a survey of most-read or most-influential political blogs in Brazil, at least the first 10 would be written by mainstream media journalists.

With the current political crisis, these blogs have seen a surge in audience. In Brazil, opinion is a very rare commodity in a newspaper, that’s usually more hard news than anything. So the journalists’ blogs have become a great source of opinion and rumours coming from those who are actively involved in the whole crisis coverage.

And now, the same journalists are talking about how the Brazilian blogosphere is, at last, becoming a relevant part in the country’s news sources. Take this piece at Folha Online, for example. It is an overview of a chat with the newspaper’s Nelson de Sá, who has a weekly column called “All the Media”.

Brazilian blogosphere took shape with the crisis, says Nelson de Sá

Journalist Nelson de Sá said last thursday that the Brazilian blogosphere has taken shape with the political crisis. According to Nelson de Sá, it is possible that next year blogs will present some maturing and, as has happened in other countries, will start being part of some campaigns.

“I have the feeling that, as has happened in the recent elections in the US, United Kingdom and Iran, political blogs will seem ever more partisan - and will even, in some cases, begin to take part in the campaigns”, said Nelson de Sá, who participated in a Folha chat with 297 readers.

The journalist also adressed the media’s role in the political coverage. In Nelson de Sá’s opinion, the media is at a crossroads, where the impartiality myth, “that was alredy questionable, is in check”. “You have only to follow the American blogosphere, the most vibrant and powerful there is, to feel the change”, he said.

Frankly, I think this is all bulls**t. For starters, the Brazilian blogosphere was doing well before the crisis, thank you. It just so happens that there weren’t many political bloggers, but there have been quite a few geeks, writers and musicians keeping blogs around for some years now.

But more than that, it is just too convenient that “the Brazilian blogosphere took shape” just because traditional journalists began to have an audience for their blogs. Not that I have anything against journalists keeping blogs, being a journalism student myself. But as mainstream as blogs may become, I don’t think there’s much of a blogosphere to be praised if it is made only of the same journalists that give us the news everyday.

Solon Brochado: Cláudio Avolio says journalist Lúcia Hipólito, talking about the referendum on Globo News last night, said the “no” victory didn’t mean the government couldn’t impose a practical ban. “Even with the people saying ‘no’, the government could, instead of prohibiting gun trade, make it prohibitive through legal means like IPI (a tax on industrialized products) , ICMS (a tax on merchandise circulation)”, she said. It sure wouldn’t surprise me.

Solon Brochado: Dave Kopel, on the Volokh Conspiracy, has a great (in both size and quality) post about the referendum, as does Glenn “InstaPundit” Reynolds. I think the subject might have received more attention from conservative bloggers abroad before, if it weren’t for Plamegate and Harriet Miers’ nomination for the Supreme Court.

The mainstream media is also giving the referendum some attention. While it only shows in the “more stories” part of CNN International’s site (and apparently nowhere in CNN.com), both MSNBC, BBC and Google News are giving it some prominence in international sections.

Brazilian media, so far, have restrained themselves to usual real-time coverage through online news outlets, like Terra and Folha Online. But while we wait for monday’s news, Cisco’s post shows what seems to be the MSM’s official spin on the referendum’s outcome: it wasn’t a reflection of the people’s will, as much as a result of good marketing strategies. I wonder if they would’ve said anything like that had the “yes” vote won.

My friend Renato Parada is a great example of how our current political crisis can have a positive effect on society. A few months ago, it was rather unusual to see any sort of political commentary on his blog. When it happened, it was usually mockery. Nowadays, though, he has become perhaps the most “fair and balanced” political voice of Insanus’s blogs.

Take this post, for example. While I wouldn’t be so quick as to say all those who can’t read are ignorants, he makes a pretty good point, specially for a country where voting is compulsory. So, to the post:

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