After years of complaints, Brazilian justice has arrested the now former president Michel Temer on corruption charges. The in-depth study by Livio Zanotti
Michel Temer did not expect it, although circumstantial accusations have been pursuing him for years, filling the drawers of the Public Prosecutors’ offices. As Deputy Chairman of Dilma Rousseff (never accused of personal enrichment) he had represented the pivot around which the parliamentary majority necessary for her dismissal had been built. He then took his place at the top of the state, keeping it from 2016 until 3 months ago and loading himself with initiatives that were not at all popular. His relations with the new President were far from bad, as were those with the Minister of Justice, Sergio Moro, the former judge who became famous for having condemned the other President, Lula. But as Shakespeare makes Hamlet say: “Although the crime is silent, some mysterious circumstance can make it evident …”.
Lula himself intervened from prison, certainly not to defend his innocence, but the right of each accused to enjoy the guarantees of the law that protects his freedom up to conviction. Strongly alluding to a “clockwork justice”, to which, moreover, almost all Brazilian information mentions with greater or lesser insistence. The government would have favored if not urged the drastic measure against Temer, driven by the urgency to recover at least in part the favors of a strongly disappointed public opinion. The polls, of which politics now lives every day everywhere, say that in just three months the ultra-nationalist Jair Bolsonaro has lost 16 points of popularity, dropping from 67 to 51; while, conversely, the rejection rate rose from 21 to 38 per cent. Signs to be aware of.
The new head of state found himself having to parry several hits at the same time. He first tried unsuccessfully to mediate a fight between his right-hand man and chairman of the far-right party – the Social Liberal (PSL) – and his children over serious administrative irregularity. The judiciary accuses them of having fraudulently received large public funds, rigging the number of candidates registered on their electoral lists. Feeling betrayed, the President resigned. Then the eldest son, Flavio, denounced for financial crimes, for which after a few turns he has nothing left but to declare: “Who breaks, pays …”. Finally, the “law and order” President has put his hand to a pension reform that is causing pensioners to rise up.
The $ 500 million bribes that would have been collected by the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, Michel Temer’s PMDB, appeared too frequently alongside the many millions that ended up in the pockets of Jair Bolsonaro’s son and party in the most prestigious news such as A. Folha of San Paolo and Veja. It was necessary and urgent to react, he heard himself say in the corridors of power in Brasilia: attack corruption. But unhinging the power of drug trafficking that infiltrates national society and economy from favelas – Brazil’s number one problem – requires determination and time that the government does not seem to have at its disposal. The corruption of politics is equally felt and more at hand, Montesquieu has been marginalized by globalization and the popularity of justice requires some provisional virtues.Livio Zanotti
Ildiavolononmuoremai.it
