6
WHEN Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez was briefly removed from power in 2002, the coup plotters installed in his stead the head of the chamber of commerce. That incongruous image sprang to mind when Dilma Roussef was replaced last week by Michel Temer.
Brazil’s interim president is not the head of the chamber of commerce, but he certainly looks the part. And the all-male, all-white cabinet he has put in place only enhances the image.
One of the key reasons why there has been considerable dismay over the recent political manoeuvres in Brazil is that whereas Roussef faces an impeachment trial by a largely hostile senate ostensibly for the fairly common tactic of fiddling the figures to improve the image of state finances, most of her main accusers, including Temer, themselves stand accused of personal corruption.
In fact, Eduardo Cunha, the president of the lower house of parliament, who was instrumental in guiding the impeachment process through his chamber, was promptly removed from his duties by the nation’s supreme court once he had played his role. Temer himself, meanwhile, is a potential candidate for impeachment, and less than 2pc of Brazilians were keen on him to step in as president.
Besides, although the moves against Roussef were carried overwhelmingly in both the lower house and the senate, it is worth reflecting on the fact that some of her more vociferous opponents dedicated their votes to the putrid military regime that ran Brazil from 1964 and 1971, and one of them specifically mentioned Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, a particularly notorious torturer whose victims included Roussef.
Roussef faces an impeachment trial by a largely hostile senate.
As a member of the underground Marxist organisation Política Operária (Workers’ Politics), Roussef was arrested in 1970 with a gun in her handbag, and was subjected to sexual abuse, beatings and electric shocks — despite which she never gave away any names. “She’s a terrible communicator,” recalls a former comrade, “but she is very determined.”
Roussef was not a particularly well-known entity when she succeeded Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2010, becoming Brazil’s first female head of state. Lula, after serving two terms, left the presidency with a popularity rating of 85pc, and Roussef, his former chief of staff, won her first election by a landslide. By then, their Workers’ Party (PT) already faced allegations of corruption, related both to kickbacks from the state oil company, Petrobras, as well as to monthly payments doled out to legislators from other parties in return for parliamentary support.
Lula and his party survived the scandals that erupted during his tenure, which often entailed the indictment of PT office-holders, among others. This can partly be attributed to a culture of corruption in the country: the PT’s political adversaries were considered equally guilty. Besides, Lula had presided over a period of substantial economic growth, reliant to a considerable extent on the international commodities boom.
A long-standing trade union leader, Lula went out of his way not to alienate business interests or the US, while putting into place state-led welfare initiatives that are credited with lifting large numbers of Brazilians out of poverty. He also proved to be an adept political operator at both the domestic and the international level, winning accolades from the US while sustaining fraternal relations with the likes of Venezuela and Cuba.
His backslapping style of politics was alien to Roussef: her personal inclinations as well as the sexist milieu in which she rose to power militated against it. She faced one of her first crucial political tests in the run-up to the 2014 FIFA World Cup, when mass demonstrations railed against the expenditure on stadiums and the like amid continued deprivation among large segments of the Brazilian populace.
She managed to ride that storm, but her majority in that year’s presidential election was substantially reduced. What subsequently prompted a precipitous decline in her popularity was the fact that she betrayed her election promises to toy with neoliberal austerity measures as Brazil descended into a recessionary spiral amid growing unemployment.
A decisive proportion of Brazilians have backed Roussef’s impeachment, although roughly the same proportion favours similar proceedings against Temer. In the wake of her suspension, the president has said she was guilty of mistakes rather than crimes, describing her ouster as a coup and vowing to fight on. Technically, she has been suspended for a six-month period, but most analysts suspect she won’t return to power.
Brazil’s next elections are not due until 2018, but a snap resort to the vote sometime this year may just help to shore up democracy in a country where the suspended president’s alleged misdemeanours are eclipsed by systemic corruption and the overtly neoliberal interim administration can only be expected to exacerbate the nation’s woes.
What’s almost guaranteed, meanwhile, is that Brazil will host this year’s summer Olympics with a backdrop that features not only the dreaded zika virus but also political turmoil.
Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2016
