“Elektions Kourts Kould Kan Kassab”

Kassab's highly effective media blitz in the 2006 mayoral race -- the mayor's reputation for truculence and crudity was addressed by the substitution of his actual likeness by a family values-friendly animated character (above) -- must have cost a fortune.

For those of you angered by our Supreme Court’s recent decision on corporate financing of political campaigns, Brazilian election law, on first inspection, might seem to be far more englightened than our our own.

In practice, however, it is extremely hard to make heads or tails of the jurisprudence generated by the system, which is considered highly politicized by its critics.

In the last presidential campaign, for example, one candidate was represented before the Supreme Elections Tribunal by his brother — a former minister (justice) of the selfsame Supreme Elections Tribunal. Some examples of jurisprudential oddities:

• TSE Clips Toucans Over Tirades, Cancels Communists
• Alckmin Campaign Accounts in Question
• The Wild and Wooly Saga of Brazil’s Election “Mini-Reform”
• Brazil: “The TSE Set The News Agenda”

Today, for example, the Folha de S. Paulo — continuing a notable pattern of prominently placing stories harmful to the public image of the current mayor, in whose election the Folha played an openly partisan role  – reports the mayor could lose his mandate over illegal campaign donations.

“Could”?

What kind of hard news story is pitched in the subjunctive mood?

Um parecer técnico contábil da Justiça Eleitoral de São Paulo indica que 33% do total arrecadado pelo prefeito de São Paulo, Gilberto Kassab (DEM), na campanha eleitoral de 2008 teve origem em fontes de doações consideradas ilegais pelo Ministério Público Eleitoral.

A technical accounting opinion from the São Paulo state elections authority indicates that 33% of the money raised by São Paulo mayor Gilberto Kassad (DEM-PFL) in the 2008 mayoral campaign originated in donation sources considered illegal by the elections prosecutor.

O laudo, concluído em outubro e obtido pela Folha, indica o risco de que Kassab seja condenado em primeira instância à perda do cargo. Em casos semelhantes, o juiz Aloísio Silveira, responsável pela ação, cassou o mandato de 16 vereadores da capital. Ele tem adotado como critério para condenar à perda de mandato contas de campanha que apresentem mais de 20% dos recursos provenientes de fontes vedadas.

The report, concluded in October and obtained by the Folha, suggest that Kassab runs the risk of being sentenced by the lower court to loss of his mandate.

Dantas’ Inferno: “Fall of an Opportunist”

The legal woes of the Economist's opportunist: Infographic by the Folha de S. Paulo. Click to zoom (then learn Portuguese)

One of the weirdest things about Brazilian journalism is the fact that it still lends credence to what U.S. newspapers, and especially the New York Times, have to say about this country.” –Kenneth Maxwell, in an op-ed in the Folha de S. Paulo

Oportunista caiu, diz ‘Economist’: An opportunist has fallen, says the Economist.

The Brazilian press — in this case, the Estado de S. Paulo — covering the world press covering Brazil.

The Limey Dismal Scientist seems to have gotten the story just about right, I reckon.

A revista britânica The Economist deu destaque na edição desta semana à condenação de Daniel Dantas. Em reportagem intitulada “A queda de um oportunista”, o controlador do Opportunity é tratado como banqueiro talentoso “que lucrou operando no espaço obscuro em que negócios e política se misturam no Brasil”.

The British magazine The Economist gave prominent play in this week’s edition to the guilty verdict against Daniel Dantas. In a report headlined “The fall of an opportunist,” the Opportunity founding partner is described as a talented banker “who made his money operating in the grey area where business and politics mix in Brazil.”

Yes, I know it is absurd for me to be retranslating a translation of the original Queen’s English.

Brazil: Putting a Bridle on the Black-Hat Lobbyist

Editor of the Jornal do Commercio‘s Confidencial column, Ahmed Aziz — often praised as a wily and well-informed gentleman of the press, although I don’t really see it — notes a recent debate over “white-hat” and “black-hat” lobbying here in Brazil.

The Brazilian lobbying profession is completely unregulated.

You have never seen such goings-on in all your life, even if you have accompanied the life and times of Jack “Victim of the Politics of Personal Destruction” Abramoff. These people could eat Abramoff raw as a diet-conscious appetizer before proceeding to the soup course.

O seminário internacional que discutiu, esta semana, em Brasília, a regulamentação do lobby no Brasil foi marcado pela pluralidade de opiniões. Os seis painéis realizados evidenciaram alguns consensos. Um deles é que o lobby é atividade legítima, própria de regimes democráticos, nos quais é natural haver a intermediação de interesses.

The international seminar held this week in Brasilia on the regulation of lobbying in Brazil was notable for the diversity of opinions expressed.

Headline of the official press release on the event: “Seminar was notable for diversity of opinions.” The rest of Aziz’s note on the event is also plagiarized selectively, verbatim, from the official press release, without attribution to the source.

Once you master Control-C and Control-V, you, too, can become a prominent opinion-maker for the Brazilian press corps!

The six panels held did display some points of consensus, one of which is that lobbying is a legitimate activity proper to democratic regimes, in which it is natural for interests to seek representation.

Copped directly from a Hilary Clinton campaign speech, this.

The seminar was held by the Controladoria Geral da União (CGU), a sort of Brazilian GAO with functions parallel to those of the autonomous Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU) — which a situationist senator recently suggested should be abolished.

The TCU is a bit like the Supreme Court — its appointees are all dug-in political appointees of a previous opposition government, most of them are PFL-DEM party hacks — and the current situation accuses them of politicizing government bean counting, much as Alberto Gonzales proposed to do for American justice.

For that reason, you have this peculiar situation of warring government accounting offices, the CGU (a self-regulatory body of the executive branch) and the TCU. I suppose it is not so completely alien a concept, given, for example, the parallelism between the GAO (an agency that advises Congress) and the executive-branch OMB.

No painel que discutiu a legitimidade e os limites éticos, Sepúlveda Pertence, ministro aposentado do Supremo Tribunal Federal e atual presidente da Comissão de Ética Pública, disse ser preciso vencer a resistência à própria palavra, freqüentemente vinculada, segundo ele, a métodos ilícitos de aliciamento. Pertence se mostrou cético quanto à possibilidade de que a regulamentação discipline o que chamou de “lobby do mal”.

In the panel on legitimacy and ethical constraints, Sepúlveda Pertence, retired Supreme Court justice and current chairman of the Commission on Public Ethics (of the Brazilian federal executive) said it is necessary to overcome resistance to the term “lobbyist,” which is frequently associated, he said, with illegal methods of persuasion. Pertence seemed skeptical about the possibility of disciplining the so-called “black-hat lobbyist” through regulation.

“What’s Bad For Globo Is Good For Brazil”

Danger! Globo Network! Risk of brain damage.

As part of my note-taking on the Brazilian media wars, I have been collecting documents recently on House Bill 29.

The measure’s remarkable tramitação through the Brazilian congress — it was originally proposed by opposition Sen. Jorge Bornhausen as a bill removing any and all barriers to foreign ownership of Brazilian broadcasters and content producers, before morphing into a bill that tends in precisely the opposite direction — recently culminated in the bill’s withdrawal from the committee agenda for the purpose of studying further amendments.

The smart money sees this development as the product of Globo lobbying.

To give you some idea of how real the lobbying power of Globo is, consider what happened when a law was passed recently that would have forced it to synchronize the broadcasting of “mature” programming with the times zones of Western Brazil.

In other words, if a program is rated as the equivalent of PG-14 and cannot be shown before 9:00 p.m. in Rio, it has to be shown at 9:00 p.m. in Acre, rather than 6:00 p.m.

What did Globo manage to do in response? It managed to push through a bill ELIMINATING THE TROUBLESOME TIME ZONE FROM EXISTENCE.

That, I thought, was impressive. Not to mention darkly banana-republican.

Columnist Mauricio Dias of CartaCapital editorializes in plain language about where he thinks the public interest lies in this dispute: “Monopolies are a bad thing.” He might also have appealed to the capitalist canard whereby competition in the free market tends to hone the quality of goods and services. On the quality of information services at Globo, see, for example:

• “GloboNews Shoots Down Airliner”
• ‘Globo Journalism Central (Brazil) Let Politicians Dictate Content’

I translate (hastily, as always):

Under the Evil Empire

Mauricio Dias

CartaCapital (Brazil)
Posted July 4, 2008 18:33:19
Translation: C. Brayton
Boi Zebu Editorial Services

See also

• “What’s Bad For Globo Is Good For Brazil”

The confrontation to come over House Bill 29, which deals with the implementation of digital convergence in Brazil, is still shaping up. To date, it has been a clash played out on in the House committee on communications. On one side, the Globo network. On the other, the telecoms, together with the Record and Bandeirantes networks and the Grupo Abril (TVA).

Buoying BrOI: ANATEL Sessions on Concession Progression

BrOI. Source: Convergência Digital. Merger requires overhaul of federal regulation of broadcast concessions. Expect a human cockfight, with eye-gouging and ear-biting, over the issue.

DCI: Comércio, Indústria & Serviços (Brazil), a fine little business daily here, evaluates the strategic outlook for changes to the regulatory framework for “digital convergence” here in Brazil.

File this under “things I do not yet understand very well, but am trying to.”

Maybe the report will reach some reader who does have a better idea of what all of this signifies.

The PGO, the federal “general plan of [broadcast] concessions,” must be amended in order for the merger between Brasil Telecom and Oi (ex-Telemar) to go through. Currently, no two regional telephone operators may merge (much as no two Baby Bells were allowed to merge after the break-up of AT&T — at least for a while there).

See also

• CartaCapital: No Joy Over BrOI
• BrOI: Done (Potential) Deal
• BrOI: Material Events
• Non-Event of the Month: BrT-Oi Merger?
• What’s Cooking at Anatel? Time Will Tell

Telecoms will increase pressure against new concession plan

Victor Hugo Alves

SÃO PAULO – The chilly silence of fixed-line telephone operators like Telefônica, Oi (ex-Telemar), Embratel and Brasil Telecom during the first public hearing on the Plano Geral de Outorgas (“general concession plan,” or PGO), held in Brasília … will not last. The telecoms are starting to compare notes on their questions and criticisms about the policy. These should start to be voiced in the next public hearing, scheduled for July 7 in São Paulo, where the telecoms will exprss their opposition to certain provisions of the PGO in a bid to overturn the rule requiring fixed telephony and broadband operations to be carried on by distinct companies.

Another important fact is that after receiving many petitions on the subject, the National telecommunications Agency (Anatel) has put the issue of extending the period of pubic comment on the PGO on the agenda for its meeting today. According to a source close to the matter, the Anatel board will likely grant the extension, the only question being whether the extension will be for 15 or 30 days. “The tendency points to an extension of the period for public consultations. It’s just a matter of whether they will extend it for 15 or 30 days”. With an extension of the comment period, new public hearings should be scheduled on issues not yet taken up, such as the situation of the Brazilian South, a topic all of the Anatel advisory board members would like to see debated.