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Brazil's Political Mess

Hamartia Antidote

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Brazil's Political Mess : Politics : Latin One

Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff received a Hail Mary pass on Tuesday, when the Supreme Court halted impeachment proceedings against her. And at the same time there was some conjecture as to whether a key ally would abandon her.


The political crisis in which Brazil finds itself and of which Rousseff is the chief protagonist with others playing key to minor roles has everyone wondering if she will survive to the end of her second term.

As the first women to lead Latin America's largest economy, there is a lot at stake. An economy expected to continue to contract well into the first half of next year, an ever-widening corruption investigation at the state owned oil giant Petrobras and the Olympic Games of Rio2016 in half years' time.

Vice President Michel Temer, a member of the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (or PMDB as it is known in Brazil), the key coalition partner to Rousseff's left-wing Worker's Party, (or PT as it is known in Brazil), appeared to ease the tension between himself and Rousseff, according to some published reports. Quoting advisors, the O Globo TV network reported that Temer and Rousseff decided that the issue of impeachment would not come up at their future meetings, that Temer would not have to make public statements supporting the government and that he would not work toward her impeachment. Temer is important because without him, Rousseff will find it much harder to secure the one third majority in Congress to defeat impeachment.

Adding to the political mess, is a Brazilian economy that is in a tailspin, with GDP down 4.5 percent in the third quarter year-on-year, and the real down a third against the dollar this year. In fresh signs of a plunging economy, the government announced that year-on-year inflation for November of 10.8 percent - the highest in more than a decade.

In the political and corruption entaglements that Brazil finds itself in there are very few clean hands. There are 20 percent of Congress members a whole that face criminal investigations, many of them linked to Petrobras, David Fleischer, University of Brasilia political expert told Agence France Presse. Congressp em Foco also reported that 40 percent of the 81 Senators are under investigation in the Supreme Court. Almost half of those investigated are in the PMDB and PT parties.

Brazilians while they have long endured some measure of corruption, this time they seem to have had enough. Nationwide rallies are scheduled for Sunday and Rousseff supporters will take to the streets on Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro -- the host city for the 2016 Olympics.
 
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Brazil police to question Lula in bribery probe involving son| Reuters

Brazil's former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been called in for questioning next week by federal police in a bribery investigation involving his son Luis Claudio, according to a summons document seen by Reuters on Friday.

Lula is not under investigation but will be questioned about the case in which police suspect a 2.5 million-real ($646,000) payment to one of his son's companies could have been a bribe to influence passage of legislation to help the car industry.

The summons dated Dec. 1 instructs Lula to appear at police headquarters next Thursday to "provide clarifications." The summons was shown to Reuters by a source close to the investigation.

Lula's attorney said the former president had no relation at all to the event being investigated and had not received the summons but would appear for questioning if summoned.

Police raided the offices of a company owned by Lula's son on Oct. 26 as part of the bribery investigation that threatens to drag his family into yet another scandal. Police said at the time that evidence of bribery, extortion and influence trafficking prompted the raid.

The former president is himself under investigation for influence trafficking after he left office in 2010 as Brazil's most popular president. The six-month probe has found nothing illegal, said attorney Cristiano Zanin Martins, of the Teixeira, Martins & Advogados firm that represents the Lula's family.

"The former president is facing no criminal investigation. Like any citizen he can be called to help in criminal probes, and he has done so in one case before," the lawyer said.

Lula's reputation has been tarnished by a huge kickback scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras that put the treasurer of his Workers' Party in jail and has implicated dozens of his political allies.

Neither Lula nor his hand-picked successor, President Dilma Rousseff, are being investigated in the graft scandal spreading to other state companies, but Rousseff's government has been weakened and her opponents are trying to impeach her for breaking budget laws.

On Wednesday, a judge accepted a police request to break bank and tax secrecy for Luis Claudio's company, LFT Marketing Esportivo, and a former Lula cabinet minister, Gilberto Carvalho.

Martins said the payment in question was a sports marketing consultancy job duly reported to tax authorities. A police report published by Brazilian media said the advice provided for the contract was cut and pasted from Wikipedia.
 
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