Public Rage Catching Up With Brazil’s Congress
By SIMON ROMERO
Paulo Whitaker/Reuters
A protester faced off against the police before a soccer match in Fortaleza, Brazil, on Thursday.
Laws that make it difficult to convict or dismiss members of Congress,
described as “the most despised institution in Brazil,” have led to
widespread public disgust.
Paulo Whitaker/Reuters
A protester faced off against the police before a soccer match in Fortaleza, Brazil, on Thursday.
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: June 27, 2013RIO DE JANEIRO — One politician was elected to Brazil’s Congress while under investigation for murder after having an adversary killed with a chain saw. Another is wanted by Interpol after being found guilty of diverting more than $10 million from a public road project to offshore bank accounts.
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Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
Romário de Souza Faria, a lawmaker and former soccer star, has criticized World Cup spending.
And Brazil’s highest court, the Supreme Federal Tribunal, convicted
another congressman of having poor female constituents, who could not
afford more children, surgically sterilized in exchange for their votes.
Across the nation, protesters keep taking to the streets by the
thousands, venting their anger at a broad range of politicians and
problems, including high taxes and deplorable public services. But a
special ire has been reserved for Congress and its penchant for
sheltering dozens of generously paid legislators who have been charged —
and sometimes even convicted — of crimes like money laundering,
bribery, drug trafficking, kidnapping and murder.
“Congress is without a doubt the most despised institution in Brazil,”
said Maurício Santoro, a political scientist. “A good deal of this
hatred is related to the fact that Congress has a tradition of
preventing its own members convicted of crimes from ever going to jail.”
Almost 200 legislators, or a third of Brazil’s Congress, are facing
charges in trials overseen by the Supreme Federal Tribunal, according to
documents compiled by Congresso em Foco, a prominent watchdog group.
The charges range from siphoning off public funds to far more serious
claims of employing slave labor on a cattle estate or ordering the
kidnapping of three Roman Catholic priests as part of a land dispute in
the Amazon.
Scholars of Brazil’s judicial system say legislators in corruption
scandals often avoid jail, in part because of the special judicial
standing enjoyed by about 700 senior political figures in the country,
including all 594 members of Congress and senior cabinet members.
The standing allows these people to be tried only in the Supreme Federal
Tribunal, producing years of delays in an institution bogged down by
many other pressing matters in Brazilian society. Until 2001,
politicians could not even be tried without the authorization of
Congress, a function of the deference traditionally paid to elected
officials in the legal system.
As longstanding frustrations with corruption boil over on Brazil’s
streets this month, protesters have clashed with security forces in
front of Congress, with some dancing on the roof in a brazen repudiation
that stunned the nation.
Just as surprising to many Brazilians, Congress is now scrambling to
cobble together a response. This week, legislators approved a bill to
use oil royalties for education and health care. The Senate, the upper
house of Congress, gave its nod to stiffer penalties for corruption, and
the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, shot down an attempt to rein
in corruption investigators. Senators are elected for eight-year terms,
while members of the Chamber of Deputies serve four-year terms.
Also, a powerful congressional committee approved a measure to lift the
veil of secrecy when lawmakers vote on whether to strip fellow members
of Congress of their seats.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Federal Tribunal ordered the immediate arrest
of Natan Donadon, a congressman found guilty in 2010 of embezzlement — a
rare attempt to try to imprison a sitting congressman. The last time
the high court made a similar move was during the military dictatorship
in 1974, when justices ordered a legislator arrested for opposing a
visit by the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Still, the fury builds in one protest after another.
“These wolves, that trash over there, they rob the people, they feast on
the meat of the people by stealing public money destined to do things
for us,” said Caio Fabio de Oliveira, 45, a civil servant in the Health
Ministry, who was among the demonstrators against Congress this week in
the capital, Brasília. “It is shameful for the Brazilian people; I work
for the government, and I’m ashamed every day.”
Brazil’s Congress has a long history of behavior among its members that
has contributed to such feelings of anger. In 1963, Senator Arnon de
Mello shot dead a fellow legislator on the Senate floor, only to escape
imprisonment, since the killing was considered an accident because he
was aiming at another senator.
Beto Barata/Associated Press
Hildebrando Pascoal, the “chain saw congressman,” was linked to a Brazil death squad.
That gun-wielding senator’s son, Fernando Collor de Mello, was elected
president of Brazil in 1989 and impeached amid a flurry of corruption
charges in 1992. Yet in a political resurrection that dismayed
anticorruption activists, he was elected to the Senate in 2006 and
retains his seat, even as he remains embroiled in a case in the Supreme
Federal Tribunal in which he is accused of profiting from an advertising
contract scheme during his brief presidency.
Even when lawmakers are convicted and sentenced for crimes, it can be difficult for them to lose their seats.
José Genoino Guimarães Neto, the former president of the governing
Workers Party, was sentenced to almost seven years in prison in 2012 for
his role in a vast vote-buying scheme. But he and three other
legislators found guilty in the scandal avoided expulsion from the lower
house after party leaders resisted the high court’s order for them to
be unseated.
Despite the prosecutor general’s contention that the convicted officials
should have begun serving their sentences immediately after the court
announced them in November, no one has gone to jail yet for the scheme,
which was revealed to the public eight years ago, in 2005.
“In a universe where corrupt politicians are seldom removed from office,
there are few institutional incentives for effective oversight and
punishment,” said Matthew Taylor, an expert on Brazil’s legal system at
American University in Washington.
Some crimes by lawmakers have been impossible to brush off.
Talvane Alburquerque, a legislator from Alagoas in northeast Brazil, was
found guilty in 2012 of ordering the murder in 1998 of another member
of Congress, Ceci Cunha. That killing allowed Mr. Alburquerque, Ms.
Cunha’s stand-in, to temporarily take her seat in Brasília. An appeals
court rejected this month a request from Mr. Alburquerque to be paroled
from prison.
Then there is Hildebrando Pascoal, commonly called the “chain saw
congressman.” When he ran for office, it was public knowledge that he
was being investigated for operating a death squad in a remote corner of
the Amazon, employing tactics like throwing victims into vats of acid
or dismembering them with chain saws. But he still won by a large margin
and served in Congress before he was stripped of his seat, convicted
and sent to prison.
Beyond the criminal charges, voters have expressed disdain for the
benefits enjoyed by congressmen, including salaries of more than
$175,000 a year; generous stipends equaling almost that amount for items
like housing, gasoline and electoral research; and budgets allowing
them to hire as many as 25 aides each.
The frustration toward traditional politicians is so high that Congress
now includes Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva, a professional clown
better known as Tiririca, or Grumpy, who was elected in 2010 to Brazil’s
lower house with more ballots in his favor than any candidate in the
nation’s history.
In fact, candidates from outside the establishment have been making
inroads in Congress, illustrating how an institution once dominated by
powerful landowners has grown more diverse. Prominent legislators now
include Romário de Souza Faria, the former soccer star who is now
condemning Brazil’s costly preparations for the 2014 World Cup — a
rallying cry for protesters around the nation — and Jean Wyllys de Matos
Santos, an openly gay member of the lower house who has emerged as an
important voice on human rights issues.
But for every such newcomer, there are established power brokers in
Congress who seem to remain impervious to the calls on the streets for a
radical overhaul of the legislature.
One legislator who has become a target of scorn in the protests is Renan
Calheiros, who resigned as president of the Senate in 2007 amid reports
that a lobbyist paid for the child support of his daughter from an
extramarital affair with a journalist who posed in the Brazilian edition
of Playboy.
At the time, Mr. Calheiros, who denied the claims, comfortably survived a
vote forced by some senators trying to oust him from their chamber.
This year, he returned to his previous post as the Senate’s president,
seemingly unscathed by the scandal until his name starting appearing,
alongside insults, on the signs held aloft by protesters. He remains in
his post.
“Congress thinks they are the owners of the country,” said Laila
Oliveira, 30, a high school teacher who lives near Brasília. “And they
are not.”
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