Anti-government protests erupted in Brazil last week following the appointment to the cabinet by President Dilma Rousseff of her predecessor, protege, and Workers Party colleague, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
The move was immediately seen as a ploy to provide “Lula” with legal cover in the face of corruption investigations, a suspicion that seems to have been confirmed by published transcripts of Lula phone calls among which the two discuss how they can protect him and impede the massive long-running inquiry into the Petrobas affair. “Why can’t we intimidate them?” he is heard to say.
Cabinet ministers are among the 700 or so senior officials in Brazil, including members of Congress, who have special judicial standing, allowing them to be tried only by the Supreme Federal Tribunal, the country’s highest court.
A federal judge issued an injunction to suspend Lula’s cabinet appointment on Thursday on the grounds that it was impeding the judicial process, while on Friday in the lower house of parliament opposition deputies accelerated an impeachment process against Rousseff over claims of improperly using funds from state banks to cover budget shortfalls.
She has angrily denounced the release of the tapes by the investigating judge as politically motivated and part of an attempt to oust her. Both Rousseff and Lula vehemently deny any wrongdoing but, in reaching into the presidential palace and also uncovering dubious payments and benefits in kind to Lula, the long-running investigation has moved to a qualitatively new level and pushed the country to the brink of being ungovernable, its president’s authority shot to pieces, its streets brimming over with rage.
Little wonder then that the obscure words of a then firebrand socialist activist in 1988 are finding an echo once again: “In Brazil, a poor man goes to jail when he steals,” he said . “When a rich man steals, he becomes a minister.” The activist – Lula, no less.