Archive for August, 2005
Political crisis
The last month in Brazil was chaotic. I headed back home hoping for some peace and quiet, before moving to my new position in the University of Arizona and what do I get? I find the country engulfed in its largest corruption scandal since the impeachment of Collor de Melo in the early 90’s. What is worse, the corruption scheme is incomparably more generalized and systematic than any seen before.
The main accusations against the PT (Workers’ Party) were made by Federal Deputy Roberto Jefferson, the President of PTB (Brazilian Labor Party). Facing serious accusations of benefiting from corruption in the post office services, Jefferson, a former ally of the PT administration, announced that he would not go down alone. In fact, he promptly denounced a very well organized scheme of bribing Federal Deputies to vote in favor of executive branch proposals.
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