News spread like wildfire yesterday that the opposition presidential candidate here had been injured in a fracas between his supporters and counterdemonstrators in the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood of Campo Grande.
Taken to hospital and attended by Rio’s former municipal secretary of health — a political ally — the candidate was reportedly given an MRI and then ordered to cancel all events and rest for 24 hours.
The interim governor of São Paulo, Alberto Goldman, publicly denounced the opposing camp as a “fascist horde” in today’s headlines.
The news bumps the other candidate top headline of the day, which is a new record low for unemployment.
I recall then-Senator Goldman as the man who organized a picket outside the Avenida Paulista headquarters of FIESP, the state industrial federation, protesting the arrest of Eliane Tranchesi of the Daslu luxury boutique here on charges of tax crimes so garish they seemed more appropriate to the underworld of Sino-Paraguayan smuggling on the chronically thronged 25 de Março than the quiet tree-lined streets of Higienopolis.
Almost immediately, the Federal Police — lionized by Veja magazine with a cover headlined “The New Untouchables” — began to be violently assaulted in the São Paulo and Rio press as “The KGB of Lula.”
Now the daily Correio do Brasil reports, with input from the pro-government Carta Maior news agency, that the injury was feigned. I quickly translate.
The morning newscast on the SBT television network today aired the entire sequence of events yesterday afternoon in Campo Grande, showing that the candidate was in fact struck by a wad of paper, and that he only raised his hands to his head 20 minutes later, after talking to someone on the telephone. The report leaves the impression that Serra may have simulated an injury in order to exploit the fact politically.
The images displayed by SBT and the interview with the oncologist Dr. Jacob Kligerman, in which he states there was no injury of any kind, call into question the need for the MRI reportedly undergone by the candidate.
The dirty tricks practiced in this presidential campaign, previously restricted to rumors and lies propagated on the Internet, the preachings of certain churches, and the mainstream news — have finally hit the streets. The fracas in Campo Grande between supporters of the two candidate, is deplorable and should be deplored by both camps before other such incidents occur, damaging both parties. And the nation.
Don Aplin will remember way back in the day when then-candidate Ronald Reagan remarked, remarkably, that trees were more responsible for air pollution than heavy industry.
Is this one of those?
lI have to see for myself — above.
Yes, the report is true.
That is to say, the report that the report was a pure, gabbling factoid is not a factoid, but a fact.
The assault with what supporters said was “a heavy object” is a complete fabrication, and the signs of distress were manifested much later, immediately after the candidate received a telephone call.
I hope I will not be labeled an enemy of the free and open markets for pointing out this sophomoric nonsense.
With friends like whoever is handling the political marketing for this campaign, the free and open markets need no other enemies.
It is simply terrible that a man of Jose Serra’s level would allow himself to become the ventroloquist’s dummy of some tropical neocon Donald Segretti in this way.
I watched the man debate the other other evening, and recall being very favorably impressed by his inaugural address as São Paulo governor.
To my wife’s continuing horror, I find Serra sympathetic in such settings.
He is a smart, cultured public-minded man who has accomplished positive things on behalf of the common weal, and Brazil is lucky to have people like him around to look after things. But.
LULA IS HITLER: Globo news commentator and soap opera producer Arnaldo Jabor, blog-plagiarized by the coup-advocating Web site “Arise, Brasil” –« !! Unconditional support for our armed forces !!» — writes, “Brazilians are a caring people. Bullshit. Brazilians are a bunch of assholes who elected as their President a guy who lacks the academic training to be hired as a garbage collector.”
But he is going to get creamed in the upcoming runoff. Again.
In short I subscribe to the “Faustian bargain” theory of Serra, which you can read plenty about in other venues.
Had the opposition any sense at all, it would have geared for the unemployment announcement with the sorts of legitimate questions that can be raised about such statistics in any economy with such a high degree of informality.
Their opponents are professional politicians, after all. They spin for a living.
This particular bunch does not out and out lie, and is not generally corrupt, despite what you may have read — something that cannot be said universally of their allies in the PMDB, as it cannot of its siamese twin, the DEM-PFL – but they can be subjected to the sort of deconstruction that all politicians should be submitted to.
I hereby declare this — along with the Folha de S. Paulo‘s Nazi moment, the defining moment of the election season and move on to other,. more agreeable, topics, I promise.
