The DEM-PFL, DEMolished?

Correio Braziliense offers an angle on the political horse-trading story of the hour — the impending extinction of the DEM-PFL political party.

The PMDB political party has effectively given up on incorporating the DEM-PFL into its ranks. In conversations between party leaders and vice president-elect Michel Temer in recent days, Temer concluded that the merger is impracticable, even though it is very much desired by São Paulo mayor Gilberto Kassab. The party’s priority now, said Temer, is its relations with the Workers Party, the PT. “We cannot cause any trauma to this relationship,” he said.

Talks on merging the Democrats with the Social Democrats are also said to have foundered.  This year’s losses may have strengthened a faction within the PSDB disposed to sever the marriage of convenience with the extreme right. For the sake of tropical liberalism, I tend to hope so.

Rumors that the PSDB’s rising star — ex-governor, elected Senator, Aécio Neves of Minas Gerais — could jump ship increases the pressure, as do public criticisms of the recent presidential campaign by former president Cardoso. The DEM-PSDB alliance ws a creature of the Cardoso years, and, if you ask me, was responsible in large part for the scandals that obscured its positive accomplishments.

All but wiped out in its traditional bastion in the state of Bahia — where its gubernatorial candidate earned 18% of the vote in a landslide reelection victory for Jacques Wager of the PT — and with its most visible national leaders going down in flames — César Maia beaten silly in his Rio senate run this year and federal district governor Arruda probably headed for a prison term — the DEM-PFL has had to endure some harsh put-downs from the outgoing president of late.

Famously, in 2006, the national leader of the PFL, Senator Bornhausen, announced his intention to acabar com a raça deles — to “exterminate their race (the PT).”

This is an unfortunate way to put things if you are a Brazilian with a German surname.

Still, I was fairly astonished to hear the Brazilian president throw the remark back in the former party leader’s face recently, almost word for word..  Symptom of a certain cockiness on the part of the federal situation after the last elections.

The DEMs have also been a steady stream of defections over the last two presidential terms — Roseane Sarney going over to the PMDB, Romeu Tuma going over to the pro-situation PTB, and a series of surprisingly harsh criticisms of the party by former São Paulo interim governor Claudio Lembo, earning him the sobriquet «neopetista» from Veja magazine, the party’s semi-unofficial propaganda organ.

As vice-president, Temer plans to propose that any rearrangement of party affiliations must preserve the “good neighbor” relationship among the two principal parties who supported the Dilma-Temer ticket. “We cannot tolerate mutual recriminations,” he says.

The PMDB, Brazil’s largest party, has earned its reputation over the years as an ideologically diffuse, opportunistic and inchoate mass of political maneuver — something of a political Rorscach blot, which tends to form part of the government coalition no matter who is elected to run the federal government.

Attempts to split the party nationally to the benefit of the opposition in the last election failed in most cases. Offering the vice-presidency to Temer, the national party president and speaker-equivalent of the lower house, was key, if not uncontroversial.

Carcará, The Glutton Bird

Carcará
Pega, mata e come
Carcará
Num vai morrer de fome
Carcará
Mais coragem do que home
Carcará
Pega, mata e come.

Tammany Hall is alive and well in the Brazilian backlands. But not for long.

A TARDE of Salvador, Bahia reports.

The federal police, in a joint effort with the federal auditor — the CGU — and the federal prosecutor’s office, arrested 40 persons in Bahia as part of Operation Carcará, which targets the embezzlement of federal funds and fraudulent contracting practices.

In all, some BRL 60 million were disbursed improperly using irregular bidding practices. Seven mayors were charged, including Antônio Miranda Silva Júnior (PMDB-Aratuípe), Ivanilton Oliveira Novaes (PSDB-Cafarnaum), Raimunda da Silva Santos (PSDB-Itatim), Marcos Airton Alves Araújo (PR-Lençóis) and Elísio Medrado (PP-Everaldo Caldas).

In some other report, I read that this BRL 60 million was siphoned off out of a total of 300 million in federal funding in 2009.

The suspects will be indicted on charges of embezzlement, misuse of public funds, fraud, criminal conspiracy, illegal tampering with contracts, payment and receipt of bribes, and so on.

The target of the abuses was federal money destined for the purchase of medicines, school lunch programs, and public works, and were accomplished through the fixing of the competitive bidding process.The feds say the investigation began a year ago based on a tip regarding the fixing of an auction involving Sustare, a food distribution business in Itaim, as well as other companies belonging to business owner Edison dos Santos Cruz and involved in the provision of school lunches.

Taking food out of the mouths of schoolchildren in a region targeted for federal hunger-reduction programs gives the case some added political kick.

The name of the operation invokes a famous folk song about the Bahian black eagle and its arechetypal greed. If you travel up the Linha Verde highway from Salvador, you will see these ominous birds hovering over the pantanal. The federal police apparently detail the naming of their operations to an agent with highly evolved literary taste.

The money was embezzled using forged receipts and inflated billing. In some cases, the goods requisitioned were never delivered. The feds collected evidence for a year in the case. Seized documents and computers will be analyzed by police and federal auditors, and the results forwarded to the federal prosecutor.

Search warrants were issued for the municipalities of Palmeira, Cravolândia, Itatim, Utinga, Cafarnaum, Lençóis, Aratuípe, Ibicoara, Brejões, Cândido Sales, Santa Terezinha, Iraquara, Bonito, Santo Estevão, Lamarão, Elísio Medrado, Mulungu do Morro, Souto Soares, Castro Alves, and Lafaiete Coutinho.

The case is far from being unprecedented.