The actions of the Federal Policy, the Congress of the MST, the reform politics and the renewal of the concession for the RCTV are the subjects treated in this edition.


Brazil’s Congress fails to overhaul political system
The actions of the Federal Police
Journalism or propaganda
Congress of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST)

Brazil’s Congress fails to overhaul political system

The Brazilian political system exhibits very special features. Its most remarkable one is the private funding of electoral campaigns. Partly due to that, there is rampant promiscuity between politicians and big enterprises, periodically producing new corruption scandals.

Another characteristic of the Brazilian political system is the open party list voting. In practice, parties provide a list of candidates and voters choose whether they want to vote for the Party (the so-called voto de legenda) or for the candidate (nominal vote). This makes electoral campaigns very confusing for the electorate (over five thousand candidates entered the 2006 race to the lower house of Congress across the country), which is why turnout in proportional representation elections (for federal deputies) is smaller than the participation in the first-past-the-post elections (for senators, mayors, governors and president). In addition, many parliamentarians consider the mandate to be theirs (and not the Party’s), changing parties many times during the four years that their terms of office last.

These and other characteristics of the Brazilian political system help to create an environment wherein the majority of the people are distant from those they elected, favoring the demoralization of the legislative branch and the political parties. Also for this reason, the political left faces ever increasing difficulties to elect their parliamentarians and to compose legislative majorities, even when it wins the elections for governments by a wide margin.

The Brazilian political system is part and parcel of a big Brazilian problem: lack of democracy. The history of Brazil is marked by four centuries of monarchy and slavery, of which three centuries as a colony. Moreover, in 118 years of the Republic (1889-2007), we have had 35 years of dictatorship (1930-1945 and 1964-1985) and 64 years (1889-1930 and 1946-1964) of limited democracy (with restrictions to the right to vote of the popular layers, to the functioning of trade unions and the work of leftist political parties).

Ever since it appeared, the PT has been struggling for democracy. As recalls state deputy Rui Falcão, in his article published on the PT Internet portal, “the PT contributed to create new rights for workers, quite often having to stand up to anachronistic institutional constraints, already surpassed by the facts of life. One example: PT militants organized strikes so that the universal right to strike was finally recognized in the country”.

“The party created democratic internal rules that contrasted with the party and electoral legislation, surprising everyone with its militants’ meetings, which replaced the boss meetings of the other parties, in which a senator or a deputy votes four or five times. The PT instituted the proportional representation of the boards and, lastly, the direct election of its leaders, a process that in the last internal elections, amidst the crisis, gathered more than 350 thousand affiliated voting members all over the country”, as Rui Falcão’s text reads.

In the electoral disputes, Rui recalls that the PT innovated by introducing enhancements into the electoral system, ever seeking to favor the enlargement of participatory spaces. He underscores that the party managed “to rid [the system] of the linked voting system and the subparty voting lists, which adulterated the elector’s will; conquered direct elections for all levels, eliminating the Electoral College and the executive-appointed bionic senators; helped to institute the free media time for political parties on the radio and television, the Party Fund, while simultaneously, through a bill by former mayor and federal deputy Marta Suplicy, made it mandatory the inclusion of at least a third of women on the candidate lists to parliamentarian elections”.

The Workers’ Party has long considered that a political reform is a priority. In the PT’s conception, the political reform comprises a wide array of themes, from the social control of the State to the democratization of communications. Among these themes is, of course, the electoral reform.

During the first Lula administration, the reform of the political system did not make any headway due mainly to the pressure of the small parties that threatened to break up with the government if the PT insisted on the reform. Three years later, these small parties were at the epicenter of a crisis that would deeply affect the PT and the government.

On account of that, the PT started to deem strategic that the political reform be undertaken at the very beginning of the second term. Yet the Chamber of Deputies turned down, on 27 June, two bills that were set to change the political system: the closed party-list voting and the flexible list voting systems.

In view of the string of political crises that wrought havoc throughout the country it was to be expected that the debate over the political reform in the Chamber of Deputies would stand to merit national attention, starting with the media. However, despite the debates regarding extremely important matters to the country’s democracy, at least from an electoral point of view, and the ensuing voting sessions taking place in Congress, the media focused its attention entirely on the actions carried out by the Federal Police and the episode involving the shutting down of Venezuela’s television channel. The Political Reform, which should be at the center of the agenda, was eclipsed in the news.

The political reform advocated by the Workers’ Party provided for deep institutional changes. Yet the reform that is looming seems to have indeed shrunk to electoral matters only and, worse, with the non approval of the pre-allocated closed list the electoral reform will be further hampered.

The resolution adopted by the PT’s National Board in April this year defended as a fundamental element the strengthening of direct democracy mechanisms such as plebiscites, referendums and popular propositions, as well as the enhancement of participatory democracy and social control mechanisms. The text affirmed that the political reform should guarantee too “the democratization of information and communication through the democratization of social communication, in addition to greater transparency and outside control of the judiciary branch”.

The PT would strive in favor of the immediate passage of the public funding for electoral campaigns, vote for closed lists –ensuring gender equity through a mechanism interspersing men and women on the list–, the end of proportional coalitions, the creation of party federations and the establishment of rigorous party loyalty criteria, key elements to broaden democracy and enhance the Brazilian electoral.

The legislative consideration of the political reform bill turned out to be a disastrous defeat for the PT. The proposal’s defeat seriously compromised the remainder of the political reform, such as the public funding of campaigns and party loyalty.

The closed list system means that, according to the percentage of votes obtained, the party would indicate those elected based on its own ranking criteria. The electorate would start voting for the party rather than the candidate.

Those opposing the system argue that the party machines would gain disproportionate strength, for it is they that will determine the order in which the candidates appear on the list. Advocates of the proposal say that the change would strengthen the political parties, for they would end with today’s practice, i.e., same-party candidates contesting for votes. Besides, the closed list would enable the approval of another item advocated by the PT: the public funding of electoral campaigns.

Background

The first session at the Federal Chamber that was to define points of the political reform was adjourned as a result of several parties changing their positions and a dissidence of almost a third of PT parliamentarians.

Opponents of the change claimed that one cannot deprive the voter from the right to vote for his/her candidate –an unsustainable argument since this already occurs today, for the elector may vote for one candidate and contribute to elect another candidate of the same party or of a coalition party.

The Speaker of the House, Arlindo Chinaglia, conducted a sort of a test in the plenary to gauge the positions. He put to vote a petition by the deputies in favor of the creation of lists, who wanted to close discussions and vote the matter immediately. Those against the list, on the other hand, wanted to continue discussing to further delay the consideration of the matter.

Two hundred and forty-five deputies voted ‘Nay’ against 194 who were in favor, an easy win for those who criticize the list. When they realized they were going to lose, advocates of the list themselves gave up voting for it.

The split in the PT representation was key in the non-approval of the closed list, a fact that also influenced the party’s internal groups, for all the factions with representation in parliament split with regard to the issue.

The PSDB deputies, the main opposition party, were split at the voting of the proposal. After the session, the party’s delegation took up the defense of another modality of political reform, the mixed district vote. Though not acknowledging that publicly, the toucans assess that the greatest beneficiary of the closed list would be the Workers’ Party, for the party is the most known among the electorate.

To PT party leader Luiz Sérgio (RJ), “the district system, in all its variants, is an antidemocratic aberration that suffocates the minorities”. The federal deputy contends that in countries where there is district voting political parties are always hampered, for the percentage of seats a party receives is always smaller than the percentage of votes.

Given the stalemate, some parties advocating the closed list system set out to seek a compromise to guarantee the approval of the list, though a somewhat mixed model –the flexible list.

By this model, a political party would provide to the voter a list with the party’s candidates ranked at the party’s discretion, whereby a voter would first vote for the party, and then, in a second vote at the elector’s discretion, for the candidate the voter wished was elected in the first place.

The Workers’ Party National Board convened in June to deal, exclusively, with this agenda, reiterated its decision, defending, as a guiding axis, the public funding-only of campaigns that, according to the party, can only be made viable through the party list system. The PT representation in the House received a mandate to negotiate the maintenance of the electoral campaign public funding-only system and the party-list system with a mandatory first vote for the party.

After several days of negotiations between the political parties, federal deputy Pepe Vargas (PT-RS), rapporteur of the political reform in the Chamber’s Finance and Tax Committee, released a document wherein he details the main points of the global substitute amendment to house bill PL 1210/2007, addressing the matter, among them district voting on a closed party list with an option for the voter to indicate a name. Subscribing to the amendment were the leaders of the PT, PMDB, DEM, PSB, PPS and PCdoB. Check out the full document.

Nonetheless, the plenary of the Federal Chamber rejected on 27 June any kind of list system in proportional elections, in two nominal voting sessions on political reform bill PL 1210/07. The second nominal voting session rejected, by 252 votes to 181 and 3 abstentions, the articles that dealt with the closed list, included in the original draft and upheld by the rapporteur in his opinion report on the 346 amendments submitted. The remainder of the political reform (which includes matters regarding party loyalty and the public funding of campaigns) is still to be considered.

Federal deputy Ricardo Berzoini, Workers’ Party national president, regretted the rejection of the closed list proposal. To him, the political reform is compromised.

The actions of the Federal Police

The latest actions by the Federal Police stirred intense debate across the Brazilian society. On one side, political analysts, trying to understand if there is anything behind these actions. On the other, a part of the media questioning the Federal Police’s actions, ultimately seeking to maintain the privileges of the elite, yet rejoicing at the spectacle.

First, it was Operation Navalha (razorblade), which resulted in the stepping down of Mining and Energy Minister Silas Rondeau and put under suspicion the figure of the president of Congress, Senator Renan Calheiros, of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), of the state of Alagoas, also of the Lula government political base.

Operation Razorblade was undertaken by the Federal Police in ten states, plus the Federal District, and deployed some 400 federal police officers to carry out preventive arrest and search warrants. Forty-three people were arrested in connection with a criminal organization that diverted federal resources earmarked for public works. Among those involved are several top state officials, besides employees and intermediaries of contractor company Gautama, of Bahia.

According to the Federal Police, the group’s objective was to profit from the execution of the public works, a group organized and structured for the practice of crimes such as frauds in biddings, passive and active corruption, influence peddling and money laundering.

One of the arms of the scheme, according to the Federal Police, operated inside the Mining and Energy Ministry. The minister’s chief of staff and his advisor were arrested and taken to a cell at the Federal Police. Still according to the police, the ring was trying to fraud a tender that benefited Gautama in a work for the federal program Light for All in the state of Piauí.

Senator Renan Calheiros was cited in Federal Police phone call taps during the operation as a contact to be pressed for the release of federal budget for the Gautama works. Days later, because of an extra-marital relationship with journalist Mônica Veloso, of which a baby girl had been born, Renan was accused of an alleged relation with Carlos Gontijo, a lobbyist for contractor company Mendes Júnior. According to a news story, Gontijo would have paid, up to December 2006, a monthly alimony of 12 thousand reais (around 6 thousand dollars) to Renan’s daughter.

To prove that his earnings were compatible with the payments made to Mônica, Renan presented documents showing earnings of R$ 1.9 million from the selling of cattle. Yet a story by news program Jornal Nacional cast suspicion on that money. The report challenged the authenticity of the sales invoices presented by Renan’s lawyer. After the denunciation, the Congress Ethics Committee put off voting the report submitted by Senator Epitácio Cafeteira (PTB-MA), with a recommendation for filing the case for lack of evidence.

Unable to move forward the process against the president of the Senate, for the case had been waiting for a rapporteur for days, Senator Sibá Machado (PT-AC) resigned the presidency of the Ethics Committee.

In his place took over federal deputy Leomar Quintanilha, of the Tocantins’s state PMDB.

Death to the king

A few days after Operation Razorblade, the Federal Police hit the headlines again, this once with Operation Checkmate, targeting a ring involved with smuggling, drug trafficking and slot machines. In this chess game, the Federal Police indicted 58 people, including none less than President Lula’s eldest brother, Genival Inácio da Silva, a.k.a. Vavá, who was indicted under suspicion of influence peddling before several public bodies and of taking advantage of his prestige in the Judiciary.

President Lula, who was on an official visit to India, said he did not believe in his brother’s involvement, but as “the president of the republic, if the Federal Police had a court order and his name was on it, so be it”.

The presidency’s special advisor for international affairs, Marco Aurélio Garcia, stated that the indictment by the Federal Police of Genival Inácio da Silva, Vavá, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s brother, shows that the government is investigating “without any kind of constraint”.

But who is the king that was checkmated? If he ever was, for, among the 39 people indicted by the federal attorney’s office under the accusation of belonging to the slot machines mafia, Vavá’s name was not included. In a note, the attorney’s office stated that there were “no elements in the records that indicate [Vavá’s] participation in any of the rings”.

At a first moment, some analysts, as reported by Luiz Antônio Magalhães, newspaper DCI politics editor and assistant-editor to the Press Observatory, hastened to say that the Federal Police were trying to benefit President Lula because he could argue that in his administration even his relatives could be investigated, something that had never happened in the country’s history before. To the journalist, “in the name of truth and in light of the ensuing facts, this argument is unsustainable, although, in fact, in the imaginary of the humblest population the investigation of the president’s brother may eventually ‘look good’ for Lula”.

Yet a pertinent thesis is that “[they] want Lula’s jugular, the one of the 60 million votes” as wrote journalist Hélio Gaspari in newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, in an article entitled “Vavá está sendo linchado” (Vavá is being lynched). The journalist cautioned to the fact that Vavá, lynched because he is the president’s brother, “is accused of influence peddling without, to date, not a single name of a public employee having surfaced before whom he would have trafficked any request that involved money from the exchequer”.

To Gaspari, “the deceitful and homeopathic divulging of excerpts of telephone call recordings involving relatives of Our Guide [Lula] has become an intimidatory and smearing process capable of blushing generals of the National Information Service, the dictatorship’s secret police. In Vavá’s case, the suspicions thrown at the fan keep no nexus with the facts. There is no proportion between the accusations he is charged with and the degree of exposure he was deliberately submitted to”. And he continues, “his lynching does not seek the citizen involved with scammers. It seeks his brother’s jugular”.

According to political analyst Wladimir Pomar, perhaps there is indeed nothing behind the events, but some questions are pertinent, however uncomfortable they might seem. Pomar questions, “why is only one “small professional” contractor being summoned in the “bidding mafia” [case], when all the market knows what happens in this area, especially with big contractors? Why did Veja magazine prepare a cannon ball only to shoot Senator Renan with bad powder and blanks? Only to create chaos, raise suspicion and “dirty” the president of the Senate?”

To him there are three hypotheses: “either there is a plan to demoralize the arrests made by the Federal Police, by dragging in the same net petty delinquents and innocent people in order to keep the blade from continuing its course and hitting big delinquents. Or there is a plan in place to put in the same basket felons and innocent people so as to demoralize, politically, those innocent and compromise the government. Or there is an all out internal war in the Federal Police, the imprisonment of law offenders serving the purpose of showing to the country that the police are doing a good job, while the arrests of those innocent would serve to avert any attempt to place the Federal Police under the tutelage of the government, as it must be in any country”.

At any rate, all caution is needed at the moment in order not to run the risk of siding with the country’s conservative right. Important newspapers and columnists also raised suspicion regarding the Federal Police’s actions.

Journalist Fernando de Barros e Silva, in an article for Folha de S. Paulo newspaper, underlined that the “Federal Police is the starlet of the Lula administration. It started to brief the media and dictate the national agenda. The old cliché according to which politics in Brazil is a police case should be inverted: the police have become a politics case. There is something new and strange in the air”.

An editorial of news agency Brasil de Fato observes that Federal Police Operation Razorblade also promotes a true “scythe fight in the dark” between the country’s elites. It has become comical, hilarious to see how the political elite seek, at any cost, to protect its privileges, to keep a halo of honesty and to guarantee an impartial nature to the bourgeois State.
Federal Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes accused the Federal Police of using fascist strategies and of promoting unscrupulousness in this operation. “Newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, surely mirroring the thought of the big Brazilian media, warns that the Federal Police action may jeopardize the Democratic State of Law. Every time any privilege of the elite is challenged, it itself evokes that danger”.

“From the Federal Police, what is expected is just that they investigate the reported wrongdoings and arrest those involved in the criminal deeds, whether white collar or financial crimes. Upon the Judiciary Branch is incumbent to guarantee the right to defense to all and to end with the impunity historically existent in our country when the people involved belong to the ruling class”, concludes the text of news agency Brasil de Fato.

Vavá is the new “Escola Base”, said journalist Paulo Henrique Amorim. “That is: the press convicts a criminal who did not commit a crime”, in reference to the episode in which a couple, the owners of Base school, and a driver were accused, in 1994, by the police of São Paulo of sexually harassing children who studied at the school. The three received death threats and the school was torn down and went bankrupt. Found innocent, they filed torts for moral damage requesting compensation. The defendants are the seven vehicles of communication that published the stories on the case and the government of the state of São Paulo.

According to Amorim, “Vavá is another criminal without a crime. The conservative (and coup-supportive) media convicted, smeared and denigrated him. After Vavá will come Vevé, Vivi, Vovó and Vuvu. And it shall be thus till the end of times. And thus shall do the conservative (and coup-supportive) media whenever a president sides with labour. It did that with Vargas, JK (who elected himself in alliance with Jango), Jango and Brizola, who was always the preferential target of Organizations (?) Globo”.

The journalistic coverage of the investigations against Vavá, as pointed out by sociologist Gilson Caroni Filho, in an article in Carta Maior “is a clear demonstration of a press that has long changed its role of overseer of the branches for that of an opposition party”. To him, this is about “anything goes journalism which is being practiced in this country since the election of President Lula in 2002. A deliberate mixture of information with opinion”. A clear demonstration of what specialists in communication call “agenda power”: the capacity to, by the successive editing of the facts, create in public opinion a dominant perception of the society in which it lives.

Journalism or propaganda

In Latin America, media companies, under the aegis of journalism, sponsor ideological propaganda, defend their interests (quite often against democratic legality) and have a decisive role in the demise of democratically elected governments.

It was like that in Brazil in several episodes, as the preparations for the 1964 coup and in the election of Fernando Collor, with the famous editing by Rede Globo of the debate between the then presidential candidates Lula and Collor. And in the 2002 and 2006 elections, in which Lula was elected and reelected to the federal government. Examples abound and are widely known.

This month the same debate resurfaced by the hands of the media. The end of RCTV’s transmissions, a Venezuelan TV channel, caused hysteria in the international and Brazilian media.

Perhaps afraid that something similar might occur in Brazil, the big communications enterprises launched harsh attacks against the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez. None of them explained the real motive for the end of the transmissions, opting instead for calling Chávez a dictator, who restricts freedom of expression.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez decided not to renew the channel’s public concession, the principal spokesperson for the political forces that tried, without success, to carry out a coup d’etat in 2002. When Chávez reestablished his control over the executive branch, the RCTV refused to cover the fact.

Chávez’s decision caused a polemic in Brazil. Many political parties, intellectuals and social movements supported the decision by the Venezuelan president.

There were pressures from all the communications businesses for President Lula to take a stand in relation to the end of RCTV’s concession. Without judging the decision, Lula answered that Venezuela is sovereign to decide on the concessions of public TV channels inside the country.

Yet the atmosphere heated up when Chávez called the Brazilian Congress a “parrot” of Washington, in reply to a petition by the Brazilian Senate requesting that the Venezuelan president reviewed the RCTV case.

The Senate’s document stated that it was of fundamental importance for the maintenance of the democratic relations of the Venezuelan people that such diversity of voices had guaranteed freedom of choice and expression through the private televised media represented by RCTV.

The Workers’ Party International Relations Department (SRI), after hearing the National Executive Committee, issued a note on the episode, reiterating the “position of the PT, in defense of freedom of expression in general, particularly press freedom, which is why we oppose the monopoly of communications by large enterprises, which utilize public concessions in defense of the private interests of a minority”. Read the full text of the note.

The Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Broadcasting Companies (Abert) repudiated the posture of the Venezuelan government and criticized the SRI’s note: “Abert also deems it regrettable and worrisome the note issued by the Workers’ Party International Relations Department in support of the decision by President Chávez not to renew RCTV’s concession, given that the respect for the freedom of expression and press freedom are the cornerstones of democratic nations”.

To journalist Bernardo Kucinski, in an article published in Carta Maior, “by not renewing RCTV’s concession, Chávez stalled for time. Yet the greatest problem still remains, permanent, which is the coup d’etat vocation of the Latin American media and the great risk that that poses to democracy. This is our agenda”.

Congress of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST)

The Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) held in Brasilia, between 11–16 June, its 5th National Congress, with some 18,000 workers attending the event.

According to information placed on the entity’s web site, the MST has decided to prioritize the strengthening of alliances with organized sectors and to broaden the dialog with society, to defend the changing of the economic model, which concentrates power and wealth, hits the workers hard and brings quasi-irreversible consequences to the environment. These intentions were formalized in the Charter of the MST 5th Congress. According to Fátima Ribeiro, a national board member, the moment has come to bring together the whole of the social forces in defense of another model of development. “It is not just the role of the MST, but of all of Brazil’s popular organizations”, she said.

During the Congress, the media highlighted the fact that President Lula had not been invited. Newspaper Folha de S.Paulo published that “the assessment of the MST coordinators is that, with a microphone in his hands, the Petista is set to lure the landless and, at the same time, jeopardize the critical tone the congress wants to have in relation to the government. The effect would be more devastating to the MST given the possibility that militants spread Lula’s message to their camps and settlements – scattered in 24 states”.

Lula has been criticized by the movement, which is advertising against the government’s biofuels’ production incentives program and complains that its, according to MST figures, 140,000 camped members had not had their demands met.

Economist José Prata Araújo, in his book “Um retrato o Brasil” (A picture of Brazil), published by the Perseu Abramo Foundation Press, observes that the figures for the agrarian reform are always controversial. “To the government, the figures are as follows: 245 thousand families were settled between 2003 and 2005; R$ 2.730 billion was invested in the purchase of land; 22.480 million hectares of land destined to the agrarian reform over the period”.

Such figures are challenged by the MST. To the movement, only 45.7% of the families were settled in agrarian reform areas. The remainder refers to old settlements or the relocation of settlements in public lands.