Tumultuous Times

The political system in Brazil has been rocked by a mammoth corruption investigation nicknamed Operation Car Wash, even as the country’s economy remains trapped in the worst recession it has experienced since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

- John Cherian

CUTTING ACROSS THE IDEOLOGICAL DIVIDE, the entire political class in Brazil seems to be treading a knife edge. Since the ouster of President Dilma Rousseff by an opportunistic alliance in the country’s parliament last year, an activist section of the Brazilian judiciary has been rapidly on the rise.

While there were no specific corruption charges against Dilma Rousseff, the accusations were that she had lied about the size of the government deficit and borrowed from a state-owned bank to cover up the budgetary deficit. The opposition Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB),which came to power after the parliamentary coup d’etat, represents the interests of Brazilian big business. While Brazil is a multiracial society, with Afro-Brazilians constituting more than 40 per cent of the population, the cabinet selected after the removal of Dilma Rousseff was all-white and all-male.

CORRUPTION A FACT OF LIFE

It is a truism that corruption in government, as well as in politics, is a fact of life in Brazil, and that its peculiar system of government necessitates perpetual political wheeling and dealing. Despite the enormous popularity of President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, and the progressive policies they implemented in the country, the Workers’ Party, or Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), could never get a working majority in parliament until the early part of this decade and had to depend on centre-right parties to run the government. Money was an important inducement that secured opposition legislators’ support for key bills during the 13 year-long Workers’ Party rule. A decade ago, the PT was caught paying monthly stipends to legislators from opposition parties in order to secure their votes to pass government-backed legislation.