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 "Whatever comes your way, will do you good" - says a sinister Spanish proverb. How many readers still remember the Collor affair? And what about PC Farias, his treasurer - conveniently murdered as conveniently murdered was Celso Daniel, the PT's Santo André mayor? What many tend to forget is that PC Farias never dipped his hand into the taxpayers' pocket.
He used to extort money from businessmen. In this case, we are dealing with informal economy. If the owner of my bar charges me 30 bucks for a beer and I pay it, there is no corruption if I don't use public funds. There was foolishness on my part or the hope of some illicit advantage.
It is a transaction between a fool and a slicker, or between two slickers each one betting that he will be gaining some advantage from this business. A business man - or a bar customer - can accept or refuse being extorted. The taxpayer cannot. His moolah is extorted in the source.
The PT government snubbed private negotiations and dipped its hand deep into the taxpayer's pocket, without any shame or pity. It stole billions from the Treasury. Well, who feeds the Treasury is the taxpayer. But the government is the one who has the safe's keys.
Every day that goes on, I hear around bars, read in letters to the newspapers, shows of yearning for the Collor days.
The PC Farias murder was the final stage of a corruption process. It was necessary to hush whoever knew too much. The murder of mayor Celso Daniel, in January 2000, was the initial kick for an embezzlement project. It was necessary to silence someone who was willing to disturb the game.
It is also good to remind that, in the wake of Celso Daniel's death, six other people linked some way with the crime have already been murdered. If the government of Collor finished with a murder, Lula's administration started with seven. And nobody seems to see this.
Odd Way of Getting Tough
Two weeks ago, a São Paulo soap opera almost stole the spotlight from Brasília's productions. I'm talking about the Federal Police intervention in Daslu, the most sumptuous store of superfluous items of the country and perhaps of Latin America.
The favorite shopping mall from eleven out of ten nouveaux riches from São Paulo, who think of themselves as being very sophisticated because they are able to pay 3,000 or 5,000 dollars for rags bought for US$ 15.
Dresses with European brands, probably made by Chinese or Vietnamese in conditions of semi-slavery, because this is the labor force that for decades has constituted the support of the European fashion.
Eliane Tranchesi, Daslu's owner, was accused of tax evasion and fraudulent import. In any decent country it would be normal that she suffer the legal consequences of these crimes.
But while the business woman and her partners were taken to jail in what seemed more like a war operation, smuggling, piracy and evasion of currency is an open wound in the Santa Ifigênia or 25 de Março streets in downtown São Paulo, places filled with street vendors, that have become huge open markets of crime.
It is as if, to combat social inequality, the poor are allowed to break the law while the rich are forbidden from doing the same. Two or three times a year, as a show that they are doing their job, the police raid these streets, they invade a couple hundred apartments used as warehouse for smugglers and apprehend forty or fifty trucks of smuggled goods.
The next day, the smuggling and the piracy are back as if nothing had happened. The seizing of 40 trucks with smuggled goods does not leave even a dent in the market.
Smuggling, piracy, defrauding can constitute crimes for the legislators. For the people, however, and even for the elites, all these actions have already become a kind of acquired right.
May the tax experts forgive me, but there are solid foundation for this kind of mentality. Why shouldn't we defraud? Why should we pay money that will fill suitcases handled by congressmen and the government's top executives, whose slick act reminds us of Italian or American Mafias?
In the days in which we live, I would say that defrauding is a civic obligation. At least it does reduce the loot destined to our noble representatives in Congress and their partisans.
The High Art of Lying
"When we start lying, we can't stop it anymore" - said the President, in an admirable confession of self awareness. Lula started his career lying. Because the PT, since cradle days, has always been a great lie. Basically, a Bolshevik wolf dressed in social democrat little lamb clothes.
Lula was elected President by lying, so much so that voters and even the innocent social-democrats little lambs keep demanding explanations today for his lies.
Evidently, he cannot stop lying. His last boasting shows an ego greater than Brazil itself:
"Among the 180 million Brazilians, there is no man or woman who is moral enough to give me ethics lessons," boasted Lula last Friday.
As guarantee of his supposed ethics, he presents his progenitors' aval: "I am the son of illiterate father and mother".
And he keeps on following faithfully the family tradition - we have to add. "The only legacy they left me is to walk with my head held high. It is not the Brazilian elite who is going to make me lower my head."
Strange logic. As if having illiterate father and mother was some title or reason to be proud of, or a certificate of honesty. As if the President would be able to show any ethics when his own son receives without any work five million reais (US$ 2.1 million) from a telephone company, just because he is the son of a famous father.
(By the way, the son also can take pride in being successful, in spite of having an illiterate father). As if the President could burp ethics when he schedules a little fake interview in Paris, to claim: "What the PT did from the electoral point of view is what it is done in Brazil systematically". In other words, corruption is part of life.
Whenever cornered, Lula holds as a mantra his condition of Nordestino (Northeastern) born in poverty. Poor, but he can fly high when he dreams. Once elected, he was fast to consummate an intransigent stubbornness: to buy, for his useless jaunts, a plane worthy of a sultan of Brunei, at the cost of 56.7 million dollars. And in order not to blemish his immaculate character, he did what not the sultan of Brunei would ever have done: he paid for the plane in advance.
Ironically, among 180 million Brazilians, the man with morale to give the President ethical lessons was there at his side, in Brasília. And this man was Roberto Jefferson, venal deputy and self-confessed felon in a colossal corruption scheme.
When a venal deputy and self-confessed criminal is confident enough to give the country morality lessons, the ethical reserves of the nation have for long been in the red.
Who will make Lula lower his head won't be the so-called Brazilian elite - as if detaining the country's supreme power is not enough to characterize someone as elite - because this elite is swimming in happiness with the world's highest interests rates and the excessive profits of the financial entities.
The Corruption Way to Power
Who will make the Supreme Ignoramus lower his head will be his own party. The lefts, upon realizing that they wouldn't control the country by gun, appealed to a subtler and more effective method: they planned to take over by corruption.
It is a more pleasant method, already tried and approved in Mexico by the PRI, which does not require the arduous and complicated handling of weapons, neither the jungle nor the discomfort of clandestinity. This is a method that does not produce three-slap guerrillas, like the PT's former president, José Genoíno: one slap to talk and two more to shut up.
The PT went overboard and ended up even encroaching on the opposition and taking over the duty of making opposition. He who makes opposition to the government today is the government's party itself. The opposition limited itself to wait with folded arms the exposure of the voracious plundering of the public treasury.
It was not any opposition politician who ordered, "Get out of there fast, Zé!". It was Roberto Jefferson, president of the PTB, a party allied to the PT. His order did not admit tergiversations. Less than 48 hours had passed and Zé dissipated as smoke in the wind.
Six little words were enough to dismiss the government's eminence grise. It is obvious that behind the four little words there was a ciphered message, whose meaning, we, poor mortal creatures, weren't able to understand. Only the President and his almighty Minister got it. And they got it quite fast.
Politicians started to timidly babble the word impeachment, but without much enthusiasm. Better to see a Lula crawling in 2006 than throwing him now into ostracism. There are talks about sacking 10 or 15 deputies. In fact, the whole Congress should be dismissed.
When Roberto Jefferson declared, in a very distinctive voice, that none of the deputies or senators present at the hearing declared correctly their campaigns expenses - me included, he hurried to add - a sepulchral silence fell in the plenary.
To reinforce his charge, Jefferson touched a handbag, where he had the declarations of the electoral expenses of each deputy. A divine silence filled the National Congress's chamber. It was as if an angel had passed through the sophisticated brothel's galleries.
The right of keeping silent was also guaranteed to the industrious corruption operators. The Supreme Court, led by the always coherent Nelson Jobim (the honorable judge is always on the side of the power, wherever the power might be) authorized those testifying under oath to lie without any risk of prison.
What Lula and the PT were not able to do - to sabotage the parliamentary inquiry - the Supreme authorized. What can be expected from an investigation, when the investigated party carries in his pocket a habeas corpus that authorizes him to keep silent, to withhold information and even to lie? We would better say, habeas turpitudinis.
Some strange actions in Brasília now start to make sense. For four times, Congress rejected taxing those retired and pensioners, considering such an action an insult to juridical principles such as the perfect juridical act and the acquired right.
But the flesh is weak. On the fifth time, Congress did not resist and ended up obtaining from the Gaucho gofer installed in the Supreme the final authorization to impose taxation on the defenseless senior citizens.
It's believed that at least a hundred deputies were bought. It is a considerable handful of prostitutes capable of altering any voting.
Here's a question no newspaper has asked yet: is a bought vote valid? Can venality create legislation? Can it overturn solid clauses and extinguish acquired rights? If these deputies are sacked, shouldn't their past votes also be revoked?
This is the question to be asked, in my opinion, to the supreme courts' ministers. That is, if being human, they haven't already succumbed to the monthly allowance temptations.
Janer Cristaldo - he holds a PhD from University of Paris, Sorbonne - is an author, translator, lawyer, philosopher and journalist and lives in São Paulo. His e-mail address is janercr@terra.com.br.
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