12b. Brazil's Government is Falling Apart...and it's Good News? Part 2/2.
It's the largest corruption scandal in the history of any democracy on earth. Billions of dollars. One guy has offered, because, you know, he's scared, to give all of the money that he took in bribes back to the Brazilian government. Uh, that amount of money is a hundred million dollars. One guy! Many people are going to jail. This is not ending in pizza. Around a hundred of Brazil's current members of congress, almost a fifth of the entire body of congress is under investigation right now. No political party is blame-free but the Workers Party, which was in charge at the time, and also supposed to be the party against this kind of corruption, is kind of catching most of the flack.
But more than just the scale it's also just awful timing. People are poised to dislike the government right now because Brazil is in the middle of a giant recession. The scandal has resulted in lots of lost jobs. The Zika virus epidemic is hurting tourism, Chinese retraction is terrible for Brazil, massive trickle-down loans to large corporations didn't spur economic growth, and if you've been to a gas station recently, you know that oil is not the profit center it once was. Always difficult for politicians and citizens, Brazil has had to implement austerity measures to get its budget in line with its revenue, but it's more than just the scale and the awful timing. Brazil also really, mostly, doesn't like the current president. They just really don't like her. Two-thirds of the country, according to a recent poll, want her to be impeached, but it's more than just the scale and the economy and the president that nobody likes. It's also Judge Moro, a guy who has taken lessons from the 90s campaign in Italy to take down the Mafia, a guy who is willing to make deals with criminals if it means uncovering more of the scandal, a guy who doesn't mind bending the rules if it means getting support from the public, and a guy who doesn't seem to mind being deified and exalted by a lot of the Brazilian public. Searching for some non-political person to put their faith in, Brazilians have taken a lot of the love they lost for Lula and put it into Judge Moro. He says he has no interest in politics but he doesn't really seem to be acting that way, and if Rousseff is impeached, and there are two current hearings trying to impeach her, a lot of people would like Judge Moro to run, but it's more than just the scale, and the economy, and the president, and the charismatic judge who takes no prisoners, or rather takes lots of prisoners. It's also the deep, kind of ugly, partisan divide in Brazil. No one knows how involved Rousseff and Lula were in the Petrobras scandal or if they were involved at all, but it doesn't seem like anyone is waiting for due process to make their judgements. And a story that might feel pretty familiar to people in America is social media has hyper-polarized Brazil. People in Brazil spend a lot of time on social media and their filter bubbles are just as strong as ours. People tend to hear and thus think just the worst things about their opposition and everyone's cynicism about everyone else, which I admit is kind of justified, results in lack of skepticism about negative stories about the opposition. And I am not saying this is a unique problem to Brazil. But like when Judge Moro released a recorded telephone conversation in which Rousseff appeared to be telling Lula how she would protect him from prosecution, a lot of people thought, “How could anyone still be supporting these people? They are so obviously corrupt,” but a lot of other people thought, “Why is a judge taking this seemingly political action and making this recording public a mere three hours after it was recorded without due process?” Lula and Rousseff say it is just 100% partisan attacks trying to take them down and have the opposition parties gain political power. The opposition says that it is 100% just them trying to get to the bottom of the scandal, even a cursory inspection though shows that it is definitely both of those things.
In response to her plummeting approval ratings and multiple impeachment hearings and also possibly to protect him from prosecution, Rousseff has brought Lula on as her Chief of Staff and if that seems fishy, it's because it is, but also the more conservative parties, some of them fed by classism and racism, are definitely using this as a political opportunity to gain power. Meanwhile, on the left a lot of people are seeing the Workers party as way too centrist and obviously corrupt and are running away from them toward the left and that's just creating a deeper partisan divide inside the county, but every major party is involved. Five of the people on Rousseff's impeachment committee are under investigation themselves. Many of the most respected leaders in the country are not going to make it out of this unscathed, which means it is going to be hard for Brazil to lead its way out of this problem. But it isn't just the bribery that's the problem. Paulo Maluf, who literally can't leave Brazil because he's wanted by INTERPOL, ran for reelection and won with the campaign slogan “I steal, but I deliver.” Lula, on the other hand, has had his own quote from 1988 thrown back at him on every social media platform on the internet: “In Brazil, when a poor man steals he goes to jail. When a rich man steals, he becomes a minister.” Many Brazilians now see this as Lula predicting his own future. Now this is all bad in the near term for Brazil but I think it's good for Brazil in the long term because it shows that being a crooked politician is not worth it. As for what happens tomorrow and the next day, nobody knows. It's a bad situation and Brazilians on the whole are very cynical about the government but they're also very pragmatic. While passions can certainly run high in the individuals, there is an overall culture of peaceful evolution rather than violent revolution and very few people seem at all interested in giving that up, which is great news.
John, I'll see you on Tuesday. Thank you to diplomat Rafael Prince and journalist and author Alex Cuadros for all of your help.
Alex's book Brazillionaires will be out in July and thank you as well to all of the members of the Brazilian Nerdfighters Facebook group. Thanks for helping me out and keeping me straight.
