When tempers flared at the recent session of the special congressional impeachment committee, the chairman ordered maracujá juice to be served. This might sound odd to English speakers, who know maracujá as passionfruit, but in Brazil it is regarded as a tranquiliser. Litres of it were distributed to the angry members. It seemed to work because they listened in silence to the Attorney General`s two-and-a-half hour, closely reasoned defence of President Dilma Rousseff, which demonstrated that, according to the constitution, she has not committed any crime worthy of impeachment, and therefore to interrupt her term of office, without the proper grounds, would indeed represent a coup against the constitution.
But the arguments of the defence were ignored in the lengthy rapporteur’s report. Instead, he concluded that the so-called pedaladas fiscais, or financial manoeuvres, of which the President is accused, amounted to ‘crimes of responsibility’. After non-stop sessions to debate the report, which lasted throughout the night and over the weekend, the committee of 65 deputies voted in favour of the motion for impeachment on Monday, by 38 votes to 27.
Eduardo Cunha, president of the Chamber of Deputies and one of the leaders of the pro-impeachment campaign, has set the final plenary vote for Sunday, so that large pro-impeachment crowds can surround the Congress, putting pressure on deputies who are still undecided. Cunha has also decided to change the traditional alphabetical order in which deputies cast their vote, instead calling first those from the southern states, which are predominately anti-Dilma, leaving the mostly pro-Dilma states of the North and Northeast until last. The aim is to put psychological pressure on the ‘No’ voters. 342 out of 513 votes will be needed to approve impeachment and send proceedings to the Senate.
Cunha, who faces charges of bribe-taking and money laundering in the Supreme Court, and in many other countries would have felt obliged to step down, seems instead free to do whatever he feels is in his own best interest. Speeding up Dilma’s impeachment, and replacing her with Vice-President Michel Temer, from his own party, the PMDB, will be rewarded with a payoff – the dropping or suspension of the charges against him, already inexplicably relegated to the back burner by the Supreme Court. He has also tried to stop a separate attempt to bring impeachment proceedings against the Vice-President.
The mood – pro- or anti-impeachment – changes every day, making it impossible to predict the outcome with any certainty. There is evidence that the anti-impeachment feeling outside Congress has been deliberately under-reported. For example, the leader of the Collectors of Recyclable Material in Rio de Janeiro, Claudete Costa, said at a rally that the poorest sectors of the population are opposed to the president`s impeachment but are given no visibility in the media. “We are against it, and we are apprehensive about this attempted coup, because this is the only government which always respected us. Where I live, in Cidade de Deus [a community], everyone is against the coup. But the media is not interested in showing this.”
Meanwhile former president Lula has thrown himself into the task of persuading deputies to vote against impeachment with promises of jobs in the government, even ministries. His chief target is the Partido Progressista (PP), which has an invaluable 57 votes. In the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party that the impeachment crisis has become, it is also the party with the biggest number of deputies accused of corruption in the Lava Jato investigation, including Paulo Maluf, former governor of the state of São Paulo and former mayor of the city of São Paulo, who is wanted by Interpol and was convicted in absentia by a French court for corruption and money-laundering. It is depressing, to say the least, to see the PT government openly trading votes for jobs, even when it means sacking responsible, honest officials and replacing them with the allies of corrupt politicians.
Seemingly carefully timed to affect the impeachment outcome came an explosive leak in the Folha de S. Paulo, apparently passed to the newspaper by the federal prosecutors investigating the Lava Jato scandal. The leak concerned the plea bargain, of Otávio Azevedo, former CEO of Andrade Gutierrez, one of three major construction companies that took part in an 11-company consortium to build Belo Monte, the giant dam on the Xingu river in the Amazon. Azevedo said the consortium´s contracts with the official banks financing the project were deliberately inflated, so that 1% of their value could be paid to the two parties in the ruling coalition, the PT and the PMDB, for their election campaigns, in 2010, 2012 and 2014.
R$75 million (£15 million) was paid to each party in the form of legal campaign contributions. Rebutting the accusation, government minister Edinho Silva said that, as they were legal campaign contributions and had been approved by the TSE (Higher Electoral Tribunal), there was no case to answer, and that in any case Andrade Gutierrez had given a larger contribution to the opposition party, the PSDB. Dilma said the leaks were premeditated, “with the clear aim of creating an atmosphere which favours the coup”. The government fears that new leaks, or new arrests and accusations against PT members or ministers, are being planned under Operation Lava Jato by judge Sérgio Moro, who they now believe has an explicit anti-PT agenda.
To increase the pressure on deputies who are still undecided, giant scoreboards have been erected in public places with their names. The newspapers are also publishing the names and photos of all the deputies, in ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘Undecided’ columns. Cunha ally and leader of the Solidariedade party, deputy Paulo Pereira da Silva, plans to park loudspeaker cars outside the homes of representatives who plan to vote ‘No’ so they can be publicly decried. A former trade unionist who has been accused of taking bribes from employers to stop strikes, Silva also charged the government with offering large sums of money to congressistas to change their vote, although he offered no proof.
The pressure against Dilma also comes from abroad. However, The Economist’s arrogant, imperial front page headline - “Time to go - the tarnished president should now go” - has not been matched by the same certainty from the markets, as ‘the day after’ a successful impeachment only leads to more questions. What would a Temer government actually mean? What would its economic policy be? Would there be widespread unrest? Would Lava Jato continue or would it be suspended before it reached the many opposition politicians known to have been named in plea bargains? And even if the impeachment attempt failed, how would Dilma´s government survive, politically weakened, faced with an even more hostile Congress, and possibly with Lula in prison?
These questions have also led to the idea of bringing forward the elections due in 2018. Some would like to see not only early presidential, but also general elections, but it is hard to see Congress members voting to cut short their own mandates by two years. Many people now believe that only a sweeping political reform – to severely limit the current astronomical cost of electoral campaigns, which favours corruption and eliminates good but poor candidates; to reduce the exaggerated number of parties, which makes it difficult to govern without constant bargaining and negotiating; and to introduce the district vote to make elected representatives accountable – would improve the situation.
This article was written by a special reporter for The Latin American Bureau, for more current affairs articles please visit www.lab.org.uk
