{"id":75338,"date":"2016-06-20T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T11:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=75338"},"modified":"2016-06-20T12:44:38","modified_gmt":"2016-06-20T11:44:38","slug":"as-corruption-engulfs-brazils-interim-president-mask-has-fallen-off-protest-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/06\/as-corruption-engulfs-brazils-interim-president-mask-has-fallen-off-protest-movement\/","title":{"rendered":"As Corruption Engulfs Brazil\u2019s \u201cInterim\u201d President, Mask Has Fallen Off Protest Movement"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Glenn-Greenwald-Original_350\"<\/a>Para ler o vers\u00e3o desse artigo em Portugu\u00eas, Clique Aqui<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

(updated below)<\/strong><\/p>\n

16 Jun 2016 – <\/em>Momentum for the\u00a0impeachment of Brazil\u2019s democratically elected president, Dilma Rousseff, was initially\u00a0driven by large, flamboyant street protests<\/a> of citizens demanding her removal. Although Brazil\u2019s dominant media endlessly\u00a0glorified (and incited) these green-and-yellow-clad protests as an organic citizen movement, evidence recently emerged<\/a> that protests groups\u00a0were covertly funded by opposition parties. Still, there is no doubt that millions of Brazilians participated in marches demanding Rousseff\u2019s ouster,\u00a0claiming they were motivated by anger over her and her party\u2019s corruption.<\/p>\n

But from the start, there were all sorts of reasons to doubt this storyline and to see that these protesters were (for the most part) not opposed to corruption, but simply devoted to removing from power the center-left party that won four straight national elections. As international media<\/a> outlets reported<\/a>, data showed<\/a> that the protesters were not representative of Brazilian society but rather were disproportionately white and rich: In other words, the same people who have long hated and voted against PT. As\u00a0The Guardian<\/em> put it<\/a>\u00a0in its description of\u00a0the largest Rio protest: \u201cThe crowd was predominantly white, middle class and predisposed to supporting the opposition.\u201d To be sure, many former PT supporters turned against Dilma \u2014\u00a0with good reason<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 and PT itself has indeed been rife with corruption.\u00a0But the protests were largely composed of the same factions who have long opposed PT.<\/p>\n

\"temer2\"<\/a>That\u2019s why a photo \u2014 of a wealthy, white family at an anti-Dilma protest trailed by their black weekend nanny decked in the all-white uniform many rich Brazilians make their domestic servants wear \u2014 went viral: because it captured what these protests were<\/a>. And while these protests rightly denounced the corruption scandals inside PT \u2014 and there are many \u2014 they largely ignored the right-wing politicians drowning in far worse corruption scandals than Dilma.<\/p>\n

Plainly, these were not anti-corruption marches but rather anti-democracy marches: conducted by people whose political views are a minority and whose preferred politicians lose when elections determine who leads Brazil. And, as intended, the new government is now attempting to impose an agenda of austerity and privatization<\/a> that would never be ratified if the population had any say (Dilma herself imposed austerity measures after her 2014 re-election, after running on a campaign against them).<\/p>\n

After yesterday\u2019s huge news from Brazil, the evidence that these protests were a sham is now overwhelming. An oil executive and ex-senator from the conservative opposition party PSDB, S\u00e9rgio Machado, testified as part of his plea bargain\u00a0that Michel Temer \u2014 Brazil\u2019s \u201cinterim\u201d president who conspired to get rid of Dilma \u2014 demanded 1.5 million reals in illegal kickbacks<\/a> for the S\u00e3o Paulo mayoral campaign of his party\u2019s candidate (Temer denies this). This comes on top of multiple other corruption scandals in which Temer is implicated, as well as a court-imposed eight-year ban on his running<\/a> for any office (including the one he now occupies) due to violations of campaign spending laws.<\/p>\n

\"viral-540x359<\/a><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s all independent of how two of Temer\u2019s new ministers were forced to resign<\/a> after recordings revealed they were conspiring to kill the corruption investigation in which they are targets, including one who was Temer\u2019s\u00a0anti-corruption minister and another \u2014 Romero Juc\u00e1, one of Temer\u2019s closest allies in Bras\u00edlia \u2014 who now has been accused by Machado of receiving many millions in bribes<\/a>. In sum, the person whom\u00a0Brazilian elites \u2014 in the name of \u201canti-corruption\u201d \u2014 installed to replace the democratically elected president is choking on multiple, overwhelming scandals of corruption.<\/p>\n

But yesterday\u2019s bombshell extended far beyond Temer, engulfing numerous other politicians who have been leading the impeachment charge against Dilma. Perhaps most significant is\u00a0A\u00e9cio Neves, the center-right PSDB candidate whom Dilma defeated in 2014 and who, as a senator, is a leading advocate of her impeachment. Machado testified that A\u00e9cio \u2014 who also had been previously implicated in the corruption scandal<\/a> \u2014\u00a0received and controlled 1 million reals<\/a>\u00a0in illegal campaign donations. To describe\u00a0A\u00e9cio as central to the protesters\u2019 worldview is an understatement. For over a year, they popularized the phrase \u201cIt\u2019s not my fault: I voted for A\u00e9cio\u201d; they even made T-shirts and bumper stickers proudly proclaiming this:<\/p>\n

\"aecio<\/a><\/p>\n

Evidence of pervasive corruption among Brazil\u2019s political class \u2014 not only PT but far beyond it \u2014 continues to emerge, now engulfing those who undemocratically seized power in the name of combating it.\u00a0But ever since the lower House vote on Dilma\u2019s impeachment, the protest movement has disappeared. For some reason, the\u00a0\u201cVem Pra Rua\u201d (come to the streets<\/em>) contingent is\u00a0not out in the streets demanding Temer\u2019s impeachment, or A\u00e9cio\u2019s\u00a0removal, or Juc\u00e1\u2019s imprisonment. Why is that? Where have they gone?<\/p>\n

One searches their website<\/a>\u00a0and Facebook pages<\/a>\u00a0in vain for any denunciation, let alone protest organizing, aimed at the deep, pervasive corruption of the \u201cinterim\u201d government or any of the numerous politicians not on the left. They are still promoting what they hope will be a massive march on July 31, but that centers around Dilma\u2019s impeachment, not Temer or any opposition leaders who have proven to be deeply corrupt. Their purported anger over corruption seems to begin \u2014 and end \u2014 with Dilma and PT.<\/p>\n

In this regard, this protest movement is indeed representative of impeachment itself: It used corruption as the pretext for the anti-democratic end it sought to achieve. Whatever else is true, any process that results in the empowerment of people\u00a0like Michel Temer, Romero Juc\u00e1, and A\u00e9cio Neves had many goals; anti-corruption was never one of them.<\/p>\n

* * * *<\/p>\n

Last month, Brazil\u2019s first Pulitzer Prize winner, the photojournalist Mauricio Lima, denounced impeachment<\/a> as a \u201ccoup\u201d with the Globo TV network at its center. Last night, as a guest on Chelsea Handler\u2019s Netflix show, Wagner Moura, arguably Brazil\u2019s most popular actor, denounced it in similar terms<\/a>, saying that domestic media coverage<\/a> has been \u201cextremely limited\u201d because the Brazilian media \u201cis owned by five families.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/u><\/strong>: Shortly after this article was published, it was announced<\/a> that \u201cinterim\u201d President Temer just lost his third\u00a0<\/em>minister to corruption in less than two months since he seized power: this time, this Tourism Minister\u00a0Henrique Eduardo Alves, accused in Machado\u2019s plea statement of receiving R$ 1.5 million in kickbacks from 2008 to 2014. If you\u2019re going to take power undemocratically and use \u201ccorruption\u201d as the pretext, it\u2019s generally a bad idea to fill your new cabinet with criminals (and, for that matter, for the new president himself to be implicated in multiple layers of corruption).<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

Glenn Greenwald<\/a> – \u2709glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that Dilma is impeached, where have the “anti-corruption” protesters gone?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}