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.
The scheme was organized around transfers of monies from the accounts of private marketing companies, headed by Marcos Valerio, to politicians of the supporting coalition. Marcos Valerio has won several contracts with public firms. The accusation is that the PT administration used public monies to either buy the support of politicians, which can be understood as an act of active corruption, or to pay campaign debts, a smaller crime, but still a crime.
In either case, the offenses are very serious and have tinted forever the reputation of the PT. The top leaders of the party have already stepped down from their positions and the new president, Tarso Genro, speaks of re-founding the party. It is impressive to see how more than twenty years of investment in constructing a solid reputation of transparency and direct democracy is jeopardized by wrongdoings in three years of controlling the federal administration. The crisis of confidence on the PT is a big loss for Brazilian democracy. If anything positive can come out of this is the hope that an environment prone to reforming the political system, especially electoral and party system rules, emerges.