The credibility of Brazil’s congress has been left in rags after its lower house overwhelmingly voted not to approve corruption charges against the president, Michel Temer – even though 81% of his countrymen and women said in a recent poll that they should.
Temer was charged with corruption after a close aide was given $150,000 in cash – part of $12m in bribes prosecutors allege Temer and the aide were due to receive after intervening in a business deal.
Two-thirds of the lower house had to approve the charges before the supreme court could confirm the decision and suspend the president for up to 180 days for a corruption trial. But more than half of its deputies deputes voted for Temer, giving him a clear victory, as had been widely expected, and saving his beleaguered presidency – at least for now.
“I want to construct a better country for each Brazilian, pacified, just, without hate or rancor. Our inexorable destiny is to be a great nation,” Temer said in a victory address. “I thank the chamber of deputies.”
The decision came just over a year after many of the same deputies voted to suspend Temer’s predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, for breaking budget rules – charges that led to her eventual impeachment.
The allegations Temer faced were much more serious. He became the country’s first sitting head of state to be formally charged with a crime after he and the aide were accused of accepting the promise of the “undue advantage” of millions in future payments.
And compounding the sense of farce, according to research by Congress in Focus, a political site, at least 190 of the 513 deputies able to vote face criminal processes at Brazil’s supreme court.
“This shows the bankruptcy of the Brazilian political and electoral system,” said Edson Sardinha, the site’s editor.
The televised vote late on Wednesday followed an intense burst of political manoeuvring. In June and July, the government agreed an extra $1bn plus to deputies for projects in their home states. On Tuesday, Temer met with lawmakers from a powerful agribusiness lobby and his government announced a measure to reduce the pension contributions farmers make for workers.
“This is what causes this sense of shame,” said Paulo Baía, a political scientist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. “This is the politics of patrimonialism, of the exchange of favours, of private interests – and not of the public good.”
As with last year’s vote against Rousseff, there was no shortage of pantomime. Then, the conservative deputy Wladimir Costa fired off a confetti gun when he voted. During Wednesday’s vote, opposition deputies mocked the “Temer” tattoo Costa recently had placed on his shoulder, wearing “Temer Out” badges in the same place.
“Temer is an ethical, transparent man,” Costa said in a speech. According to Open Accounts, a Congress watchdog, Costa’s home state received $2.14m in government funding in June and July.
Speaking before the vote, the opposition deputy Sílvio Costa accused the government of “making corruption official”.
“You need to think of your children, your grandchildren. You are giving a terrible example to Brazil,” he said.
An enormous graft scheme at the state-run oil company Petrobras was first unveiled in 2014 and enveloped members of Rousseff’s Workers’ party and its congressional allies.
But things have hardly improved since Temer took over. He lost six ministers to scandals last year, saw investigations into another eight agreed by a supreme court judge this year, and was then recorded during a secret meeting with a meat mogul encouraging the obstruction of investigations and recommending a close aide the executive could deal with.
That aide, Rodrigo Rocha Loures, was later recorded intervening with an antitrust organ in a business dispute and filmed furtively exiting a São Paulo pizzeria with more than $150,000 in a suitcase. Brazil’s prosecutor-general alleged this, and a further $12m, was due to Temer. Temer’s lawyer Antônio Mariz told lawmakers there was no evidence Temer ever received the money.
His government has vowed to carry on with an unpopular program of austerity measures it argues are essential to drag Brazil out of its recession – and many lawmakers voting to preserve his presidency used this as an argument.
“Yes to pension reform, yes to labour reform, yes to political reform,” said Rubens Bueno, casting his vote before a microphone.
But at least one more charge – for obstruction of justice – is expected. Meanwhile, a popular sense of disillusionment with Brazilian politicians is soaring. In a July poll for the Agora political movement, 79% said they would like to see non-politicians stand in the 2018 presidential and congressional elections.