Brazzil
Politics
March 2003
And here we have the first political crisis of the Lula era, in clear view of every voter, just five weeks after inauguration, and one week since the new Congress took office. Not exactly an honorable record. We are not talking about an internal crisis in the ruling party, but a trepidation in the commitment for change that united an enthusiastic country. We are not talking about a split based on theoretical or tactic interpretations, but a deep fracture in its most precious role: that of representing the critical conscience of the country.
The crisis had to unfold into the economic stage (degenerating in a kind of incivility that the PT—Lula's Workers' Party—had never used when it was the opposition party), but the lighting of the fuse was the imposition of Senator José Sarney to preside at the High Chamber. This is the core, the root, the symbol—now the buzz word—of a moral schism which is not confined to petista (from the PT) militants.
The Zero Hunger program does not depend on congressional approval nor on its repercussion in the international press. President Lula talked about "mutirão", speaking in tupi mutirum language, meaning a national enterprise. Collective mobilization. Solidarity.
The name may vary, but the program Zero Hunger can only succeed if built on credibility. The organization of the program can be adjusted with relative ease, if it manages to propagate a sense of trust and faith. This sense will never be reached if we continue to ignore the structural causes of poverty in our country—the despotism, the nepotism, the power of the local coronéis ['colonels': big moneyed, powerful men], the evasion of public money, and judiciary complicity. These may sound like abstract causes, but if we clearly associate hunger with the word 'corruption', we can understand why the brave Senator Heloísa Helena refused to attend the theatrical show which gave the helm of the Legislative Power to the Northeastern viceroy.
Heloísa rated the Senator from Amapá and owner of Maranhão State as an "oligarch". She actually demonstrated moderation. Other historical petistas have still not swallowed that "Sarneysian pearl" during the campaign ("If we have to pass through the bottleneck of PT, let's do it quickly"). With all his proclaimed political skills, the senator—man of letters—was more candid than the Voltaire character and spoke what came to his head: his support for Lula was opportunistic. This is the intimate conviction of the man who will be the congressional arm of the PT administration. This is the intimate snapshot of the guarantor of governability and mobilization for change.
Hunger will only be eliminated when the owners of power cease to collect millions in 50-real bills. Silveirinha, inspector in the Rio's governor Garotinho administration, can be seen as a Robin Hood. He took from the rich (big taxpayers) and gave to the poor—the poor in Switzerland, that is. But the money of the Sarney-Murad couple, that money belonged to the people of Nordeste—the hungry.
What we see now is real-politik taken to paroxysm, a pre-Carnaval fantasy, a blackout of the national memory. This summer's best seller, A Ditadura Envergonhada (The Embarrassed Dictatorship) by Elio Gaspari, a tell-all about the dictatorship years in Brazil, mentions Sarney only once (in the acknowledgments—924 pages of revelations). The political arm of the military regime, the man who did the dirty work in order to silence the MDB and to ensure the silence cloaking the repression, is getting bleached, and it's indecent. This is the hard core of the confrontation in the very soul of PT.
The wrangling about economic policy within the ruling party is only happening now because the frog was too large to swallow. It didn't set off when PT submitted its letter to the Brazilian people, when the party gave its support to the IMF agreement, when Lula guaranteed that all contracts would be respected or when Finance minister Antonio Palocci gave his first speeches. Even the indication of Henrique Meirelles for the Central Bank, which also confronted the political coherence of PT Senator Heloísa Helena, was by-passed—albeit her tears.
The appointment of Sarney, however, stirs a deeper, more organic, more instinctive revolt. It is the ressurrection of the old Nordeste with all the vicious practices of the coronéis and the impunity guaranteed by the magistrates. It is the consecration of the cynicism of a politican who yesterday, in his tasteless litany in the daily Folha de S. Paulo, declared that "… the requirement of transparency in the information society… has become an essential claim…". Why did he, then, stop the transparent handling of the process involving his own son-in-law and, indirectly, his Senator-daughter?
Sarney has uncovered a dormant fury. New and bigger furies will wake up tomorrow, with the confirmation of the story by Dora Kramer, in Jornal do Brasil (also of Folha and Época) stating that the Bahia State apparatus has tapped the telephones of an ACM opponent and, probably, of two eminent petistas—the Ministry of Labor, Jacques Wagner, and the corregidor general of the Union, Waldyr Pires. The ball will be on Palocci's court.
Alberto Dines, the author, is a journalist, founder and researcher at LABJOR—Laboratório de Estudos Avançados em Jornalismo (Laboratory for Advanced Studies in Journalism) at UNICAMP (University of Campinas) and editor of the Observatório da Imprensa. He also writes a column on cultural issues for the Rio daily Jornal do Brasil. You can reach him by email at obsimp@ig.com.br
Translated by Tereza Braga, email: tbragaling@cs.com
This article was originally published in the Jornal do Brasil—http://www.jb.com.br