Battered by accusations that his party paid bribes to buy votes in Congress, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vowed to fight corruption even if it meant "cutting into our own flesh."
Investors fear the corruption allegations could paralyze Silva's administration. Stocks fell for the second straight day over concerns about political stability in South America's largest country. Brazil's currency, the real, was down again against the US dollar and the euro.
Addressing a UN forum in Brasilia on Tuesday night, Silva vowed to spare no effort in the fight against corruption.
"We won't protect anyone, we will cut into our own flesh if necessary," Silva told delegates at the opening of the four-day Global Forum on Fighting Corruption.
He also declared he had fired the directors of the postal service and the state-run IRB reinsurance company, but stopped short of announcing a wide-ranging anti-corruption package as many here had expected.
"This is not the right moment to announce administrative measures," Silva said.
But he promised that actions his government were taking would turn corruption into "a sad memory of a past that will not return."
The firings followed the launch of a congressional probe into corruption in the postal service last week, the first major corruption scandal to taint Silva's administration.
That scandal widened on Monday when a senator from the governing coalition said Silva's Workers Party paid monthly bribes to buy votes in Congress.
Silva told the forum that his government was dedicated to investigating all charges and would not oppose a separate congressional probe and was even ready to help it.
"I want to say it very clearly. My government will investigate [the charges of corruption] until the very end ... I have a biography to preserve, a moral patrimony, a decades-long history of defending ethics in politics," Silva said.
Before the speech, analysts said Silva had to explain what he knew about the payoffs in order to restore confidence.
"The crisis has now hit the president himself," said Alexandre Barros of the Early Warning political risk consulting group in Brasilia. "People are asking, `Did he know?' and if he knew, `Why didn't he act immediately?'"
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
RSS