The circle is closing and the noose is tightening around the 13 Brazilian House representatives charged with corruption. The House leadership decided to send their names to the Ethics Board. There, the cases will be individualized, allowing each one of them the right to defense. A reporter will be appointed for each representative, and he cannot belong to the same party or be from the same state as the charged congressman.

Point for House speaker Aldo Rebelo, who escaped the temptation of individualizing the cases limiting them to the House leadership sphere, which would call for even more time for the proceedings.

People want to know how many will resign their mandates, since the deadline for doing so ends Tuesday, October 18. Once opened the procedures in the Ethics Board, resignations will not prevent neither the continuance of the trial nor a possible condemnation, which will prevent those convicted from running for any elective post for eight years.

Representative Alceu Collares, of Rio Grande do Sul's PDT party, was the one who best defined the situation. For him, there cannot be differentiation among sentences. He who got 4 million reais is as guilty as the one who took 20 thousand reais.

The crime is the same, regardless of the amount that was pilfered. The former governor from Rio Grande do Sul believes that the Lower House will fulfill its duty, expelling all the guilty ones.

Electorate Has Been Vaccinated

Speaking of Collares, he maintains that the heretofore so frustrated PT experience in power, was predictable. If the party had lost in 2002, for the fourth time, there would always remain the doubt about the efficacy of their proposals to change Brazil. When in power, however, the Workers Party as well as President Lula revealed that they had no plan to govern Brazil.

They limited themselves to follow the neoliberal economic model of the preceding administration. They compounded the foreign and public debts and kept the resources flowing into overseas accounts. They impoverished society even more, in spite of abundant propaganda to the contrary.

For all that, it was worthwhile, because the electorate will not repeat the experience. It's vaccinated against it. We will need to restart with next year's elections, but working with this premise: it won't do any good swap six for half dozen, that is , there is no point in electing a whatsoever tucano (toucan, a candidate from former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso's PSDB party) just not to re-elect Lula.

All the worse if the candidate is former-president FHC himself. The solution is in the so-called third way, the answer is to choose someone who presents an alternative program for governing and is willing to carry it through.

The parties from the Left have all to gain from uniting, starting by the PDT and the PPS. All will be decided in a direct relation between voters and the candidate, without the need for big party structures to back up the candidate.

When asked to name names, Alceu Collares starts from the premise that is still too early, but he mentions senator Cristovam Buarque, who has just left the Workers Party and returned to the PDT (Partido Democrático Trabalhista - Democratic Labor Party), and Roberto Freire, president of the PPS (Partido Popular Socialista - Popular Socialist Party). Other names, however, will turn out in the coming months while the field gets better defined.

Urucubaca Apart

President Lula keeps on re-creating vernacular and semantics. Because urucubaca is lack of luck, a situation that once in a while makes everything go wrong to certain citizen, party, institution or country. The term does not apply to those who wish that everything goes wrong for others.

In this case, who was responsible for things going wrong? Not the oppositions, much less the press or the population. It was the government itself, as well as the PT.

Who started out this obscene corruption festival in the country?
Who didn't keep his campaign promises?
Who is responsible for the banks sky-high profits, which are harmful to essential salary readjustments?

The answer is but one: if urucubaca exists, it lives in the Granja do Torto (the President's weekend retreat in Brasília) and works on Palácio do Planalto (the presidential office). Never in the homes of the President's opponents.

Mistake

There are certain things that should never happen. Like lack of water in the Amazonas state, for example. The planet's biggest hydrographic basin is incapable of preventing the drought in the municipalities of that state...

There are still worse things. The government's high command, for example, arrived to the conclusion that, to contain the mensalão (big monthly allowance) crisis, is enough to revoke the mandates of 16 House representatives.

Big mistake, because at least 80 of them received irregular money through the valerioduct (Adman Marcos Valério was the moneyman for the ruling PT scheme to buy votes in Congress).

To punish only 16 is to just lift the carpet's tip. Neither the public opinion nor the published opinion will put up with being fooled by another such tactic. The investigations must go on, even if the time of operaration for the Congressional Inquiries expire.

For that we have a Federal Police and a Public Defense Ministry. If all we can get is the sacking of these congressmen, then Lula's reelection will be mission impossible. And the PT will take at least 20 years to recover.

Carlos Chagas writes for the Rio's daily Tribuna da Imprensa and is a representative of the Brazilian Press Association, in Brasília. He welcomes your comments at carloschagas@hotmail.com.

Translated from the Portuguese by Arlindo Silva.

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites