Brazil's left-leaning government sought to control the damage from its first significant corruption scandal on Monday, dismissing opposition calls for a congressional investigation and promising to uncover the facts itself.
The so-called "Waldomiro Affair" has rattled investors and brought calls for the dismissal of Jose Dirceu, powerful chief of staff in President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government.
The scandal broke on Friday when the weekly magazine Epoca reported that an adviser to Dirceu had collected campaign funds for Lula's Workers Party in 2002 in return for political favors.
The official, Waldomiro Diniz, was fired the same day.
"The government has reacted, it has launched an investigation," Workers Party head Jose Genoino said on Monday. "A congressional investigation makes no sense."
But opposition figures demanded a probe.
"Waldomiro was in the Planalto Palace, the cathedral of power. Now, are there more Waldomiros in the government? That's what a commission must investigate," said senator Jose Agripinio Maia of the rightist Liberal Front (PFL).
Dirceu told congress that no wrongdoing had been found in the current government, which took power in January last year.
If a congressional investigation is launched, it could hog the political limelight and make it hard for congress to pass the economic reforms that are a keystone of Lula's agenda.
"In Brazil, a congressional investigation is not aimed at investigating but a political instrument to harm the government as much as possible and that can reduce governability and could paralyze important projects to preserve confidence," said Mailson da Nobrega, a former finance minister.
In the financial markets, the currency backtracked slightly and stocks tumbled on Monday on fears that the scandal might force the government's economic agenda to the back burner.
"It's hard to convince foreign investors that this is a serious country and a safe place to invest when stories like this emerge," said Fabio Watanabe, portfolio manager at Fibra Asset Management in Sao Paulo.
So far, the government has won approval from Wall Street for its pragmatic policies in the fight to turn around Latin America's largest economy, but successful reforms are crucial to long-term-stability, analysts say.
However, the timing of the scandal might favor Lula, political analyst David Fleischer said.
Many legislators are already leaving Brasilia for the Carnival holidays, when the country shuts down.
They will not return until the end of the month, by which time the issue could have gone off the boil.
It still could tarnish the clean image of the Workers Party, which in its years in opposition often denounced the corruption which infested Brazilian politics.
Diniz was reported to have received funds from an illegal gambling operation for the Workers' Party campaign.
Brazil's biggest recent scandal was in 1992, when President Fernando Collor was hounded from office amid impeachment proceedings over corruption allegations.
Some minor scandals have hit the Lula government, such as former Social Assistance Minister Benedita da Silva, who used public funds to fly to a religious meeting in Argentina last year.
She was fired in a cabinet reshuffle last month.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
RSS