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Brazil: The Provisional Banana Scoundrel Republic
Pepe Escobar, Sputnik, Moscow, 24 May 2016
Every political junkie on the planet has to be glued to the ongoing
Brazilian House of Cards, consistently offering an unparalleled feast of
cheap thrills.
The latest cliffhanger was the leak of a conversation between one of the key
operators involved in the oil giant Petrobras corruption scandal and a
senator and short-lived Minister of Planning in the usurper interim
government currently replacing President Dilma Rousseff while she is
undergoing an impeachment trial by the Senate.
Call the leak a short autopsy of what from the beginning should have been
defined as golpeachment; a mix of coup ("golpe", in Portuguese) and
impeachment, which took place in a one/two sequential vote in the Brazilian
Congress and Senate, as a notorious congregation of crooks investigated for
myriad offenses and crimes seized power in Brasilia in a full-fledged
Buffon's Opera. I call their scam Provisional Banana Scoundrel Republic
(PBSR).
Meet the interim Walking Dead
The leak/autopsy duly unveiled how the PBSR cancer progressed. One of the
key plotters outlines the coup; stresses how it should protect Brazilian
plutocracy/kleptocracy from unintended consequences of the ongoing,
two-year-old Car Wash corruption investigation; and how the Left - from
President Rousseff to Lula and the Workers' Party - should be criminalized
for good.
The rest would be history, including the demolition of recently acquired
social and workers' rights via the imposition of a neoliberal restoration;
total reversion in foreign policy, with geopolitical and geoeconomic
relations back to a colonized mindset; and the reestablishment of a
conservative, neoliberal, rentier hegemonic class lording over a
socially-oriented, democratic society.
That fits in with the current Brazilian Congress and Senate dominated by
"BBB" interests. "BBB" stands for Beef (the powerful agribusiness lobby);
Bullet (the weapons and private security complex); and Bible (evangelical
fanatics), all supported by corporate media. Many of these unsavory
characters are connected and/or represent the toxic Brazilian rural
aristocracy - which are in fact heirs to nobility titles handed over to
slave owners.
It was going all so swell after only a few days - even with the former head
of the lower house, notorious crook Eduardo Cunha, temporarily sidelined;
Cunha - the ringleader of a campaign financing scam inside Congress - de
facto had become the Prime Minister of the puppet former Vice-President and
current, interim President Michel Temer.
Temer The Usurper - who might actually become Temer the Brief - has been
under siege since he took power. His unpopularity index is reaching reverse
Kim Jong-Un levels, standing at almost 99%. The overwhelming majority of
Brazilians want him impeached. He's mentioned in several corruption scandals
while serially nominating ministers mired in corruption scandals themselves.
The problem is the PBSR cabal simply can't afford to let him go - and let
power slip away. The Dialogue of the Crooks leak conclusively proved that
the Car Wash investigation was instrumentalized to criminalize the Workers'
Party and bring down Rousseff while the golpeachment scam advanced in
parallel, making sure certain key political forces would not be caught in
the Car Wash web.
The Dialogue of the Crooks took place over two months ago - and at least
three weeks before the golpeachment farce reached its apex in a ghastly
voting session in the lower house. Which lead us to a key question; why the
attorney general and the provincial judge in charge of the Car Wash
investigation did not previously reveal its contents, and why did they not
take immediate action? If the Dialogue of the Crooks was revealed already in
March, golpeachment could not possibly have taken place.
The fact that there was no leak two months ago raises all serious eyebrows.
The senator featured in the Dialogue of the Crooks is a notorious node in a
historical corruption link inside oil giant Petrobras since the Cardoso
administrations in the 1990s. He happened to have been ensconced in the
political leadership of all Brazilian administrations for the past 22 years.
This means he was always the go-to Crook-in-Chief for his political party,
the PMDB.
Yet nothing gets as serious as the admission that the hidden agenda of
golpeachment has always been to ditch all corruption probes as part of a
broader agreement involving selected Supreme Court judges. If this was not
the Brazilian House of Cards, the whole golpeachment scam should have been
declared null and void by now. Yet, as I have been stressing from the
get-go, this is a sophisticated, Hybrid War-style,
judicial-political-financial-media coup. And it will be very hard to unravel
it.
The logic of perpetual scandal
So future historians already have their story line - furnished by the
Dialogue of the Crooks; the 2016 golpeachment was a scam concocted by a
bunch of political scoundrels willing to do anything to stay out of jail.
Temer the Brief, a lowly puppet, is now under siege. His two manipulators -
the former leader of the lower house and his short-lived Minister of
Planning - are now forced to be in the shade. Practically, that means
approving deeply unpopular economic policies in Congress will be much
harder.
Temer The Brief's is a certified illegitimate reign. Not even privileged
actors - the Goddess of the Market, assorted businessmen, even some
mainstream media sectors - are buying the farce. Meanwhile, the Brazilian
street won't be quiet; that's Rousseff's and the Workers' Party's strategy
(although that's not enough).
So what next? The only way Rousseff would be reinstated is if she and the
party could concoct a credible narrative of the priorities for the country
up to the 2018 presidential elections. That implies a lot of back room
political negotiation - and Rousseff is really lousy at it.
What has been aptly described as a presidential condominium - the new normal
in Brazil - envelops conflicting agendas with no consensus in sight. So one
should expect the nation to be mired, for a long time, in the logic of
perpetual scandal.
The key variable from now on is how the PBSR gang will maneuver - possibly
illegally - to cling to power. The Public Ministry and the Federal police
are totally politicized. Increasingly there are no mediation powers. The
PBSR gang will take no prisoners. The Public Ministry will go after Lula
while the attorney general will try to block any chance of Rousseff being
reinstated.
Meanwhile, the social democrats turned neoliberal enforcers - key associates
of the PBSR - will keep advancing their own agenda; hardcore privatizations;
handing over the exploration of the pre-salt oil deposits to US Big Oil; and
dutifully prostrating as Washington vassals. One just needs to examine the
extreme interest by the US Department of Justice on all things related to
the Car Wash investigation to infer how Washington is deeply involved in
smashing leading Brazilian corporations.
And what about the BRICS?
Brazil is now globally isolated. Vulture fund-friendly Argentina President
Mauricio Macri has been the only leader to recognize the illegal PBSR
government. The PBSR worships Macri as if he was Beyonce; they absolutely
love his role of Slasher of a socially inclusive cycle of governments in
Argentina.
Washington has not had the balls to do it directly - relying on minions such
as the State Department spokesman and the interim ambassador to the OAS. But
the message is unmistakable; golpeachment is legal, and Washington trusts
Brazilian "democratic institutions". Compare it to the Russian Foreign
Ministry, which alerted to "foreign interference" in Brazilian affairs.
The new Brazilian Foreign Minister - a sore loser (twice) in presidential
elections won by the Workers' Party - took no time to launch his glorious
Vassal of Washington/US Big Capital policy. He already issued a veiled
"threat" to Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador and El Salvador.
Mercosur will be sidelined to the benefit of the Pacific Alliance - where
Mexico, Peru and Colombia are under Washington's wings. Unasur will be
ditched.
And then there's the stale ice cream in the scoundrel's tart; the "B" in
BRICS is now dormant. This means the role of Brazil in the BRICS bank will
be seriously compromised. Granted, the BRICS were never a homogenous group
and have been riddled with conflicting interests. For instance, India's
nuclear-sharing agreement with the US effectively ties it up with
Washington. The next BRICS summit is in India, in October. Brazil risks the
ignominy of being represented by the PBSR gang.
Meanwhile, make no mistake; as much as the Car Wash investigation was
revealed to be a totally politicized drive - where fighting corruption was
just a convenient cover - the PBSR gang and their allies will do everything
to get rid of the 2018 direct presidential elections. So here's the sorry
Brazilian road map up to 2018: total political, economic, social and
juridical chaos.
From:
<http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20160524/1040180698/brazil-latam-banana-r
epublic.html>
http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20160524/1040180698/brazil-latam-banana-re
public.html
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