#wgoib

So, this is gonna be me trying to put A LOT of stuff into very few words. Written at 26/05/2017.

Alright. You know how the whole world is kinda feeling like its situation can’t possibly get any more scandalous at this point? it’s what we felt about two weeks ago, too. I mean, between our ex-president being on a crusade against the justice system and the media and all the unpopular measures taken by our politicians lately, including reforming the labor laws and social security to make them shittier, and a new small corruption scandal every week, y’know, you figure it can’t get much worse than that. 

And then it happened. It was a beautiful Wednesday (or was it Thursday?) night. All was its usual mess. And then a businessman came forward like, “ops I recorded the president negotiating to bribe someone who’s in jail to keep quiet and the other presidential candidate negotiating on how to get his usual 2 million in bribes discreetly lol did I mention he might have mentioned the possibility of killing someone?” BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM. 

If you screamed right now, imagine how much we did. There were so many memes. So many. The jokes, the glorious jokes. I hadn’t have that much political fun in ages. But you’re probably still confused (we are, too), so imma explain it a little better.

Businessman Joesley, owner of the biggest meat company in the world, was caught in corruption schemes. Who wasn’t, right? so, like it happens in Brazil, he started negotiating his sentence by giving other people away. And he sure as fuck named a lot of people, like anyone else, but this guy did something that other people hadn’t yet: he recorded it. You’d think more people would’ve been this smart just in case, I guess, but so far, nah. And obviously the most polemic recording is of a conversation our now President Michel Temer had with him, negotiating bribes to Eduardo Cunha. If you’ve read my older posts, you’ll know his name. He’s the main dude behind Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment (if you have no idea of absolutely nothing i’ve just said, dude, go back to the other posts, this is quite saga already). Did I mention he’s in jail??? yeah. Arrested for money laundering sometime ago or something (one cannot remember all the scandals in brazil for more than 2 months since there ARE SO MANY NEW ONES ALL THE TIME). Still, he did swear he’d bring two presidents down, and now it seems the time has come, one way or another (we’re so dramatic, omg, this is gonna make for excellent movies someday, we’re already out-houseofcarding house of cards).

BACK TO IT. So. The president is on tape negotiating quite a crime. In most countries that’d lead to the guy resigning. And we thought he would, too, actually. This dude scheduled a press conf. and we were all on the edge of our seats waiting to see the second president down in less than a year. But guess what? dude goes “I’m not resigning”, gives pissed off speech, alleges everything is a fake and says if we want him down we’ll have to bring him down. He also kinda tries to forbid people from using his pictures in memes, which leads to opposition party creating a whole gallery online of pictures they bought of him for people to do their memes safely. I ain’t joking. The most brazilian think to ever happen, probably.  

Meanwhile, remember I said there was a second recording? Yeah, it was from Aecio Neves, and you might remember him too: he ran for president against Rousseff at the last elections, and he was the main activist for her impeachment after he lost the elections, all “against corruption” and shit. Lol. Dude was literally negotiating how to get his money, cursing a lot, and saying they’d need to find good people to do this money transporting thing, it had to be someone, and I quote, “that we can kill before they can make deals with the police”. And then he proceeds on suggesting his cousin’s name. Talk of family issues, right? Anyway. It came as no surprise for us with half a brain that both these man were corrupt because honestly there had been people saying that before, but nobody had them on tape yet. Aecio’s sister has been arrested, he has kinda stepped down from his senate position and his apartments are being raid by the police, let’s see where this leads. 

Back to Temer, remember when he told people we’d need to take him down if we wanted him down? Yeah, people took that quite literally and a couple of days ago in the middle of a protest some SET FIRE to a few ministry buildings. Nothing much happened to anyone there tho. But Temer took that as a good opportunity to give especial authorization to the Army to be on the streets and do whatever was needed which was pretty fucking scary since we haven’t been out of a dictatorship for thaaaat long??? but the order has been revoked by now so we’re ok. For now. I guess. Who knows. 

So the question now is how long can Temer hold himself in power. If he does fall, which is complicated, since he’d likely have to resign (there are already a few impeachment processes opened against him, but since they depend on the ok from chamber president, who still supports him, it’s unlikely to work, and it’d take months anyway), but if he did fall, we’d get either president of the chamber of deputies in power or president of the supreme court in power (cause president of the senate can’t, since he’s a defendant in a corruption investigation) - and I said “OR” there because there’s a chance president of the chamber also becomes a defendant in corruption charges through the next months so we can’t really be sure on how the succession line will be in the future. Yeah, that’s how screwed we are. Anyway, if any of them get to power they are bound to organizing new indirect elections, by the constitution, since it’s past half the term and we’d only need someone to basically finish this year and the next one when there are elections again, hopefully. However, with congress as it is, with most people there charged with something, you’d think brazilians are.... less than happy with the idea of our congressmen choosing their own fucking president. And you’re right. Most of us are. Which is why there is a campaign to make a change and try for direct, real, voting elections (and to get Temer out, obviously). 

Sooooo  in spite of a popular saying here being that the year in Brazil only starts after Carnival, a fuckton of stuff has happened since January. I’m gonna try to cover them all quickly, but brace yourselves. Written at 11/02/2017.

The year started with the total meltdown of  our prison system. Basically, gang fights lead to the massacre of some 60 people in a prison in Amazon, then another governor from another state asked for federal help cause they thought they were gonna face the same issue, then our Minister of Justice said “nah” then SURPRISE shit happened and some other 40 people died and more prisons were taken by organized crime and long story shot some couple hundred prisoners were killed by other prisoners in a bunch of different prisons (and by killed I mean decapitated and their heads thrown over the prison walls). Government says situation is under control now but tbh we don’t really know that and we don’t even know how many people died or who’s really in charge in a few prisons, so. 

Then, a few days later, the judge (Teori Zavascki) who was in charge of the investigations of that famous corruption case, Lava Jato, died in a plane crash just when he was going back to the capital to approve on some quite dangerous papers. So our president had to name someone else to fill in the vacancy for the Supreme Court, right? He named Alexandre de Moraes last week... Our former Minister of Justice. Yes. The dude that did nothing on the thing above. And a man who has been linked to organized crime before. Waiting now to be confirmed as the next name to the Supreme Court. Yeah. Great. Also, speaking of the corruption investigations, a bunch of people got named, then the president decided “out of nowhere” to create another cabinet and name one of the accused guys to that position cause then he can’t be investigated by regular police, supreme court only, then a judge decided that that wasn’t legal, then the government appealed and it was overthrown, then another judge decided it was illegal, then the government appealed again and again and again and so on and they’re still fighting on it. 

 And if thought that was enough disaster for a year, there’s more. The entirety of the State of Espirito Santo was left without police for a week and, well, exactly what you think happened happened. Like in those distopia movies, people didn’t leave their homes, and the ones that did probably got mugged or killed. Hundreds of stored were sacked, cars robbed, etc. About a hundred people died, mostly murdered. This happened because police officers found a way to strike cause they happened to be the most underpaid officers in the whole country and their salaries haven’t been readjusted for seven years (and the state government still didn’t concede the increases after this). Federal government sent in the army, didn’t really solve the situation. Troops in other states, especially Rio, threaten to do the same thing now.

Coming back to policies, the High School Program reform was approved by the congress this week and every single teacher I know is pissed off which is probably not a good sign for a High School reform. What it does is making some subjects a mandatory base, like maths and portuguese, and others become optional... Like History, or Geography, or Chemistry, or Physics (they were all previously mandatory before). And now you kinda don’t need to have graduated in the subject you’re gonna teach to be able to teach, just prove you know the thing. And more hours of school for everybody, also. If it all sounds like a shitty idea, it’s because it is. 

On minor news, the new Mayors of Rio and São Paulo have been busy proving me they’re just the assholes I thought they were with the first naming his kid for a thing and the second embarking on a crusade against street art in general. Also, the Yellow Fever is back. Probably due the death of most mosquito predators like a year and a half ago in an area due to the biggest environmental disaster of the history of this country for which no one has been prosecuted yet. And our ex-first lady (wife of Lula) died and people became really mean and shitty about in online. 

So, we’ve had....... a complicated month. So complicated that in all honesty there is stuff that I haven’t even fully grasped yet. But we can put it mainly in two topics: government-voting-new-fucked-up-projects and corruption scandals. And they are connected, so grab a drink (you’ll need it) and let’s go through it, as fast and as clearly as possible.

Let’s start with the laws things. If you’ve been looking at Brazil at all through the last months you should know we’ve got ourselves into a big ass financial crisis (and I won’t discuss why here cause that’d take another 20 paragraphs). . And you should also know that our President Dilma Rousseff was impeached a few months back, so her vice-president, Michel Temer, is in charge. Except he’s not sticking to her plan, or the plan that got them both elected, but to an opposite one. I’ve discussed it before somewhere here. If you’ve got no idea why Rousseff was impeached and all I’d strongly recommend you stop and google that or read my previous analysis and links to it cause it’s gonna be hard to grasp without that background.

So, moving on. Financial crisis demands acting from the government, right? Right. That’s what the new government thought too, and they’re taking action. Problem is... what is the action? 

The main act is called PEC 241 or PEC 55  (PEC simply means law project if you’re wondering) - it changes names when it goes to senate (and it has, since congress approved it. Senate should vote it this week). What it does  is freezing public spending for 10 years, and it can be extended for another 10, making it possibly 20 years of freezing. It’s an austerity measure, and basically the government would only be able to increase spending in any area by cutting investments in another one (having corrected the values year after year based on the previous years inflation). And looking from a distance, that seems great, right? But we need a deeper look here, especially at two points. First is, this would be applied for expenses in Health and Education too. We have public health systems and public schools/universities, yes, but especially the health system and the schools aren’t really in good conditions (the universities are still the best in the country, but deteriorating fast as it is), so cutting investments in those would mean a lot more deaths and a lot more illiteracy, for starters. Our results on the PISA this year were already worse than before, so you can see where i’m going. Someone did the math a few weeks ago, and if this law had passed 10 years ago, we’d had spent 60% less than what we did on health already, which is to imply we’d have total and absolute chaos. I mean, there are thousands of people dying literally at hospitals floors at this point, I don’t think we can take a damn cent out of it BUUUUT that’s not even my point here.

The real point is that expenses on Health and Education together don’t even amount to 10% of our GDP. So it is to say that they might take resources out of it to  try to cover the debt (now somewhere from 40-60% of our GDP) and that will fuck up a lot of people, but it won’t really make a huge change to the debt. See how shitty that is? Besides, investment in education and research is the path that would maybe someday lead us to closing that debt that comes mainly from our current economical world dynamics and history, but that’s a debate for another day. 

The second part where it gets ugly is that this law project would also impact on public servers wage. And having no real increase in your payment for the next 20 years should seem fucked up by itself, but you’ve got to add something else to the mix: Supreme Court ruled legal just a few weeks back to cut on wages of public servers that strike. So basically they’re gonna freeze your salary and if you strike you don’t get paid so you can’t really strike but will likely not earn enough at some point as well. Great, huh?

Second thing they’re working on is Social Security, making the rules so that it’s harder for people to retire and making the work-time needed so long there are literal memes of toddlers on those work costumes spreading around under “someone preparing to get retired before DEATH after 2016″. So that’s not really great either. Oh, and ofc they’re cutting normal citizens retirement plans, not military ones or the politicians ones (which make for HUGE part of the debt in social security, actually). They also promised to make labor laws “more flexible” (we all know what that means, right?) and “privatize everything” (which they started, WITH OUR OIL. Another matter for another time.

Now off to the corruption scandals, and we’re gonna link all of this at some point. We’ve had at least 3 through the past couple of weeks, and they’re about literally everyone and i’m not using literally lightly there. First one blew up yesterday or the day before when one of the people from one of the previous scandals got their testimony/bargain deal leaked. It’s a bribery scandal and the point is: the more people you give up, the less years you get. About 70 people from the same company that was involved in this bribery scandal committed to taking those deals, aaand that was one of the first ones to come out. 

Our president got named 43 times through it. Yes, Michel Temer. Yes, forty-fucking-three-times. And he’s not the only one at all, the list of important people on it is so big a newspaper literally just dedicated the whole first page headline to the names and then ellipsis and then another three lines of names bellow and they were far far from done. What came as a surprise is that the main party here that was blamed for The Root Of All Corruption And Evil™ (known as PT, Rousseffs party and why most people wanted her impeached) was... less prominent on it than expected. Instead, it was mainly made of names from Temers party (PMDB) and the strongest opposition party (PSDB) that is basically in control of the government now too. And there’s like, another 60 people of the same company still waiting to speak. So. Yeah. A movement started to ask Temer to step down yesterday.

Second scandal - what a surprise - also has Temer at it. Oversimplifying it: Minister A wanted thing done in a certain city to value his own land, but the area was historical patrimony so he went to pressure Minister B, in charge of that sort of thing, to cut him some slack and allow the thing to go through. Minister B denied (it was like a 30 story shiny building in the middle of a colonial historical center like what the fuck was on this dudes mind I don’t even-)  but he didn’t stop there: B went public saying Temer (yeah, the President) had also pushed him on to solve the matter cause once press got a sniff of it they were all on top of both Ministers. Cause Minister A didn’t get fired until Minister B said that about the president (and then B resigned) which leaves us with not only a President that lost 6 Ministers in 6 months but also with a President that could be charged with influence peddling. Opposition has filled for an Impeachment, but it’d have to go through president of congress which is his ally. But why, you might ask, did Minister A not get fired for this kind of shit right away? Well...... because Temer needed his influence on the lower house of Congress to pass that shiny project we were just talking about, PEC 55. 

The third scandal: President of the Senate became officially a defendant on a corruption charge from a few years back. Problem is, in case Temer has any emergencies, he is the next on at the Presidency Successor line, so the question was: can we leave someone that’s formally answering for a corruption process there??? No, not really, right? Eeeh. Supreme court first had told him to step down, then he just kinda ignored the order (can you do that??? no, but he did) then the Senate filled something and they appealed and whatever whatever RESULTING IN: He stays. He can’t become president, though. Don’t ask me to explain this. Nobody understood it either. But it became a bit of a crisis because people were discussing about how far could one power interfere at the other’s work (like, can the Senate do what it did against Supreme Court? Can Supreme Court take down the Senates President? CAN YOU IGNORE A COURT ORDER???). But we’ll never get those answered cause, ya know, we’re in Brazil and our constitution should read “laws were made to be broken”. Point is, WHY did Supreme Court allow him to stay on power? ... Most likely, because The President needs him to pass that bill through the Senate. HA! Great, huh? Fucking fantastic (and also fucking corrupt of the Supreme Court, which is not really a surprise for me but it kinda was for a lot of people - they’re denying having had any motives other than their consciousness, of course). 

“So, they’re probably breaking a fuckton of laws to end up fucking y’all over?” yes, that’s it. That’s the point. Also, everybody involved is now kinda accused of corruption. Yeay. Great couple of weeks.