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CORRUPTION-BRAZIL:
Scandals Breed
Growing Loss of Trust
Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, (IPS) - ”This
spells the end for our last
hope,” declared Dircilea da
Silva Vieira, reflecting the
sense of disillusionment that
has spread through Brazil over
recent weeks as the government
of Luiz Inácio ”Lula” da Silva
is hit by one corruption scandal
after another.
Da Silva Vieira, 48, the
concierge in a middle-class
apartment building in Rio de
Janeiro, said that although
there have been allegations of
corruption made against the Lula
administration in the past, she
never believed them - but she
does now.
As a result, after voting for
the leftist Workers Party (PT)
in every election since it was
founded by Lula in 1980, ”I will
never vote for Lula and the PT
again,” she stated, adding that
many of her friends and
acquaintances share the same
view.
For his part, Helio Dutra still
believes in Lula, ”who is still
my greatest hope.” The president
will succeed in weathering this
crisis because of his good
sense, predicted the PT
stalwart, who was the secretary
of sports in Belo Horizonte, the
capital of the southern state of
Minas Gerais, when the local
government was led by the party
in the 1990s.
But Dutra, a steadfast defender
of ethics, admits that ”there
are rotten apples in the PT.”
”All human beings are
susceptible to errors, whether
in politics, religion or
anywhere else,” he said. At the
same time, however, he stressed
that ”Lula is not to blame,”
although he would not ”bet his
reputation on the rest of them”
- referring to other PT leaders.
What is needed now is to
determine who is in fact
responsible and ”clean up the PT
and the other parties,” by
subjecting the political sector
to the same unprecedented
efforts undertaken by the
current government to fight
corruption in other spheres,
added Dutra, a dentist and
fervent Catholic.
The PT ”is not the party of God,
it also has a lot of demons,”
and should now strive to
overcome the ”arrogance” bred by
power and return to its ethical
and political principles, he
said. On the contrary, if the PT
becomes ”a party just like all
the others, there will be no
reason for me to stay in it,” he
concluded.
These opinions sum up the
difficulties facing Lula, his
government and his party before
a public that has grown used to
hearing the PT declare itself an
intransigent defender of ethics,
but has now witnessed its
attempts to evade congressional
investigations of corruption
allegations.
These charges are backed by a
range of evidence and testimony,
despite the fact that one of the
main whistleblowers, lawmaker
Roberto Jefferson, does not
wield a great deal of
credibility himself, noted da
Silva Vieira.
Jefferson, formerly the
president of the Brazilian
Labour Party (PTB), accused the
PT three weeks ago of bribing
legislators from two allied
conservative parties to ensure
their support in Congress. The
PTB is also a PT ally.
Jefferson himself is implicated
in a scandal involving a bribery
scheme in the state-run post
office, but he believes it is
acceptable for his party to
obtain money illegally through
public companies, because
”everybody does it,” he
maintains.
PT president José Genoino and
Lula's former chief of staff
José Dirceu categorically deny
Jefferson's allegations.
Nevertheless, Dirceu, who was
purportedly responsible for
overseeing the cash payments to
allied party legislators,
stepped down from his cabinet
post last week to return to his
seat in the Chamber of Deputies,
or lower house of Congress, in
order to defend himself, the
government and the PT, he said.
This latest scandal could spark
a further drop in the popularity
of the government and Lula
himself, a persistent trend
already reflected in the most
recent public opinion polls,
commented Ricardo Guedes,
director of the Sensus Institute
polling firm.
The last survey conducted by
Sensus, in late May, indicated
that 39.8 percent of respondents
held a positive view of the
government, as compared to 41.9
percent the previous month. This
drop in the approval rating was
believed to have resulted from
the post office corruption
scandal involving the PTB and
Jefferson, who subsequently
retaliated with his own
accusations against the PT.
More recent polls conducted by
other firms have begun to
reflect a further loss of
confidence triggered by
Jefferson's allegations, but ”to
a lesser extent than expected,”
Guedes told IPS.
He believes that the government
has been spared further damage
by the fact that the economy is
creating new jobs beyond the
expectations of a population
that ”expects the very least,”
in addition to the social
programmes that provide up to 40
dollars a month in income
assistance to over six million
Brazilian families.
These factors have helped
bolster Lula's personal
popularity, noted Guedes, but
confidence in the government has
fallen to just over 35 percent,
according to the most recent
polls, and if it drops below the
”critical point” of 33 percent,
a subsequent recovery will be
extremely difficult, he
predicted.
Moreover, for the first time
ever in a Sensus Institute
survey, corruption was chosen as
the number one reason ”to not
feel proud of Brazil,” selected
by 27.1 percent of respondents,
and thus outranking violence -
previously the leading reason -
and poverty.
The latest poll by Datafolha, a
survey firm affiliated with the
Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper,
revealed that 65 percent of PT
members believe there is
corruption in the government.
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