One of the strengths of a country's liberties is generally considered to be the solidity of its institutions such as the presidency, monarchy, Congress, and, of course, the judiciary. The thinking behind this view is that strong institutions allow a system to continue to function regardless of the individuals who run them. Institutions in Brazil have rarely played this stabilizing role.

The monarchy, for example, which is often credited with keeping the country unified while the Spanish colonies formed separate states, actually rebelled and led it to independence. The monarchy was overthrown, in turn, less than 70 years later.

The military has shown no lasting commitment to democracy, the judiciary is inefficient and suspect, and the presidency has been racked by upheavals ranging from the suicide of Getúlio Vargas in 1954 to the impeachment of Fernando Collor de Mello in 1992.

The Congress, inside which the current scandal arose, is another institution with an unimpressive record. The ongoing crisis is testing it to the limit.

This scandal has hit Brazil like a succession of earth tremors, causing damage and panic with each wave and allowing no time for life to return to normal before another shockwave arrives. It started in May with what looked like a small example of the routine corruption, which everyone who lives here is familiar with.

A middle-level manager at the state-run Post Office was secretly filmed pocketing a bribe of 3,000 reais (about US$ 1,200). This affair could easily have petered out had the manager not said that he had been acting on behalf of the head of the PTB party, Congressman Roberto Jefferson.

Since the PTB is one of the government's allies, opposition parties began exploiting the affair and succeeded in having a Congressional inquiry, known as a CPI, set up on May 26.

Although the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was initially against the move, it eventually gave its support. It even managed to get a Workers Party (PT) Senator, Delcídio Amaral, appointed chairman and a sympathizer from the PMDB, Osmar Serraglio, appointed chief investigator or relator as he is known.

On June 6, Jefferson set off a bombshell when he told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that the PT had been making regular monthly payments to other allied parties, such as the PP and the PL, in exchange for their votes. This led to a call from the head of the PL, Valdemar Costa Neto, for Congress's standing ethics committee to open an investigation and end Jefferson's mandate for breaking parliamentary decorum.

The Post Office CPI started its findings on June 9. Five days later, on June 14, Jefferson appeared before the ethics committee and caused another sensation by claiming that the money for the bribes had passed through the office of Lula's chief of staff, José Dirceu.

Jefferson testified for more than eight hours and implicated not only himself but various other party leaders (including Costa Neto) and Dirceu. In what has now become a famous phrase, with overtones of blackmail, he addressed Dirceu directly, saying: "Zé Dirceu, if you don't get out of there quickly you'll make a witness of an honest man who is President Lula. You had better get out quick Zé if you don't want to do a good man harm." Within two days, Dirceu had resigned. Costa Neto stood down on August 1.

Media Sets the Pace

The CPIs were constantly being upstaged by the media rather than setting the agenda themselves. Jefferson's testimony led to another CPI being set up to investigate the monthly vote-buying payments - the so-called Mensalão CPI.

To complicate things further, another investigation - the Bingo CPI - was set up to look into a previous scandal involving one of Dirceu's top aides who was filmed demanding bribes from a suspected criminal in 2003. We now had four investigations going on at the same time and once again it was the media which was setting the pace at a furious rate.

Since these scandals are inter-linked, the CPIs and ethics committee were often going over the same ground with the same witnesses. The testimony of some key figures lasted more than 12 hours and, as new developments arose, it became almost impossible to focus on the main issues. Although the print media played its role in breaking the news, the television stations, from which most Brazilians get their news, were not so impressive.

The Bandeirantes 24-hour news channel, for example, provided live coverage of the hearings but without any commentator to explain what was happening. This was like broadcasting a football match without having a commentator to name the players, give ball-by-ball coverage and provide background information. The result was that the viewer was often left in the dark about the significance of what was being discussed.

Still Waiting for an Answer

The hearings were more orderly than one might have expected from Brazilian politicians but some members shamelessly used them to publicize themselves. Some PT members tried to expand the investigation to other areas and parties, particularly the PSDB of former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

One of the worse offenders was the expelled PT Senator, Heloísa Helena, who made speeches and harangues. Having said that, Senator Helena had the courage to raise the question that could apply to every single elected PT member - had her own election campaign been funded by money raised illegally? Will we ever get an answer to that simple question?

At the end of August the Post Office and Mensalão CPIs agreed to produce a joint report. This was an essential step since if these Congressional investigations are to achieve anything they have to be reasonably simple to follow, credible, flexible and efficient. A few days later, on September 1st, the ethics committee also acted decisively in recommending unanimously that Jefferson and 17 other Congressmen, including Dirceu, lose their mandates.

This was progress of a sort but the CPIs still have a long way to go before we can really have faith in their efficiency and integrity. A sign of the lack of efficiency was the comment by the Post Office relator on September 12 that he still did not have enough evidence to pass names onto the public prosecutor's office. Since several witnesses have basically perjured themselves on television in front of the nation, this is difficult to believe.

The first installment of the Post Office findings is due to be published shortly, more than four months after the investigation got under way. There are also still a large number of key witnesses to be interviewed including the former PT president, Jose Genoíno, former ministers Aldo Rebelo and Luiz Gushiken, and perhaps even finance minister Antonio Palocci. No-one knows when this will end and there is a return to a semblance of normal political life.

Poor Role Models

In terms of integrity, the human element will almost certainly let us down since the Congress is effectively investigating itself. The credentials of some members of the CPIs themselves are questionable. The Post Office CPI chairman, Delcídio Amaral, joined the PT about four years ago from the PSDB. This shows that he does not belong to the PT's founding members, which include Dirceu, who still yields considerable power within the party.

At the same time, it shows that Amaral is one of those politicians who switch parties whenever it suits them. Perhaps it was coincidence that he joined the PT when it was becoming apparent that Lula would become president but a more likely explanation is that he wanted to stay close to the center of power.

The relator of the Mensalão CPI, Ibrahim Abi-Ackel of the PP, was alleged by Época magazine to have received deposits of 150,000 reais (US$ 66,000) from companies belonging to the man believed to have been the banker behind the scheme, Marcos Valério. Despite these allegations, he did not resign and has come under no strong pressure to do so from his peers.

There are already signs that all 18 Congressmen will not lose their mandates. Two have already resigned, thereby avoiding expulsion and safeguarding their right to stand for office again. Some are involved in intensive lobbying campaigns to win their colleagues' votes and there is a good chance they will succeed since the plenary vote will be secret.

The Estado de S. Paulo made an interesting comparison with a CPI in 1994, which also recommended that 18 Congressmen should be expelled. Only six were eventually stripped of their mandates by the plenary session of the House of Representatives, thereby losing the right to stand for election for eight years. Eight were absolved and four resigned.

What this shows is that some Congressmen are still prepared to back their colleagues even when they have broken the rules of the institution they represent. This kind of behavior does nothing to improve the image of Congress among voters.

Even those members who do lose their mandates will be replaced by substitutes who will probably be their allies, friends and perhaps even relatives. The Brazilian political system does not allow for a by-election. This means that one corrupt member of a party can be replaced by another corrupt member of the same party.

Many voters must have been bemused to watch Senator Antonio Carlos Magalhães of the PFL question witnesses since he himself resigned from the chairmanship of the Senate in 2001 after breaking its rules. When he stepped down he was replaced by his son, Antonio Carlos Magalhães Junior. Ironically, his eponymous grandson, Antonio Carlos Magalhães Neto, is a prominent member of the Post Office CPI and is making a national reputation for himself.

Congress has also failed to take swift action to ensure that this scandal does not happen again. There was a lot of talk a couple of months back about reducing the amount of money spent on campaigns and bringing transparency to fund-raising and a proposal has even been discussed in the Senate.

However, any reform will need to be passed into law by October 3, one year ahead of the next presidential vote. There is virtually no chance of this happening and next year's campaign will be carried out under the same rules.

Cavalcanti Remains Defiant

The strongest blow to Congress's credibility was the allegation that the chairman of the House of Representatives, Severino Cavalcanti, had received bribes in 2002 and 2003 from a businessman to allow him to operate restaurants inside the Congress. This allegation led various Congressmen to call on Cavalcanti to step down or resign since he could hardly be the chief magistrate when the House plenary session voted on the CPI's recommendations.

Severino has refused to go and gave a defiant press conference on September 11 in which he claimed that he had been the victim of a fraud. By his recalcitrance, he has pushed the country into another institutional crisis and called the bluff of his opponents who said they would boycott his sessions. Should they do so then people like Jefferson stand a chance of retaining their mandates. The signs are that the opposition will not boycott this session but, since many of these people actually voted for Cavalcanti, they have only themselves to blame.

By voting for someone as manifestly unfitted as Cavalcanti to occupy one of the highest offices in the land just to spite the government, these Congressmen denigrated the very institution they were supposed to uphold. Once again the institution was not strong enough to resist the human element and Brazil was dropped into the lap of a person with no principles to speak of.

Cavalcanti has called for leniency to be shown to some of the Congressmen facing expulsion as though their actions were trivial. During his 40 years of public life he has been a member of at least six political parties, has publicly defended nepotism and pushed for higher salaries and more benefits for members of Congress.

The Brazilian media has made fun of him and portrayed him as a Northeastern hick who is out of his depth. However, a man who is cunning and crafty is often more successful than one who is principled and articulate.

Cavalcanti may not be an intellectual, but he is smart and clever and knows how to look after his own interests. In this, he represents a good proportion of Brazilian Congressmen. Few institutions can operate properly with leading members like Cavalcanti, Jefferson, Costa Neto and Antonio Carlos Magalhães who manipulate and abuse rather than serve them.

Unfortunately this is the face of Brazil, a country where lawbreakers, conmen and schemers use their energies to exploit institutions and systems to their own ends at the cost of their fellow countrymen. It will take a greater effort than Congress can muster to clean up the mess that Congress has created.

Veja Shows its Two Faces

A final comment on the media. While the press has done an impressive job of uncovering the unseemly goings-on, it has often done so at the expense of impartial reporting. The coverage in Veja magazine in particular has been partial and hostile to the PT and Lula.

In its current edition, for example, it has a three-page interview with Senator Roseana Sarney (PFL) who was a strong potential presidential candidate to oppose Lula until early 2002 when a police raid on a company belonging to her husband uncovered R$ 1.3 million in cash. The source of this money has never been explained and investigations have got nowhere.

Despite this golden opportunity to ask Senator Sarney about the affair, Veja presented readers with a soft feature on her health and the number of operations she has had. In fact, it is Mrs Sarney herself who mentions the episode in passing but the magazine ignored it and only makes the most fleeting of references to the crisis, which otherwise dominates the rest of the issue.

John Fitzpatrick is a Scottish writer and consultant with long experience of Brazil. He is based in São Paulo and runs his own company Celtic Comunicações. This article originally appeared, September 13, on his site www.brazilpoliticalcomment.com.br. He can be contacted at jf@celt.com.br.
© John Fitzpatrick 2005

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