Brazilian political soap opera gets ever darker

Betrayal, last-minute reprieves, fearless heroes and a doomed relationship between a powerful man and woman -- Brazilians get this every day in their beloved telenovelas.

Now they're getting it for real in the battle to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, a political soap opera threatening to plunge Latin America's biggest country into severe crisis.

"It's like a telenovela, always with new personalities that appear, new subplots -- it's a saga," said David Fleischer, a politics professor at the University of Brasilia.

Impeachment in Brazil is a constitutional process, regulated through a system of parliamentary committees, votes and legal hurdles, complete with inevitable court challenges that could easily extend the affair beyond six months.

But there's nothing dry or academic about Rousseff's tortuous relationship with Eduardo Cunha, the speaker of the lower house of Congress and the man who decides whether an impeachment petition should be shelved or acted upon.
Until July, Cunha was ostensibly Rousseff's ally in the coalition government.

Then overnight he became her mortal enemy, and on Tuesday, following weeks of dark hints about launching impeachment, he was expected to pull the trigger.

Except he didn't and -- as of Thursday -- still hadn't even hinted when he might.

The initial reason for the delay was a technical challenge brought by Rousseff loyalists at the Supreme Court.

Yet as with anything involving Cunha -- a man seen as the Brazilian version of Frank Underwood, the Machiavellian politician from the Netflix series "House of Cards" -- a more twisted plotline soon emerged.
- Mutually assured destruction -
Rousseff has a 10 percent approval as Brazil endures a steep recession, spiraling inflation, mounting unemployment, and the worst corruption scandal in its history involving the state-oil company Petrobras.
Impeachment proponents have homed in on two main areas: Rousseff's manipulation of government accounts to cover budget holes ahead of her 2014 re-election, and allegations that her campaign took dirty money from the Petrobras case.

But Rousseff is not the only one in hot water.

Cunha, a high-profile member of Brazil's rising evangelical wing, is alleged to have taken $5 million in Petrobras bribes and hidden cash in Swiss bank accounts.

Long untouchable, he faces growing calls for his ouster as speaker -- and possibly worse.

So he could use help.

And this is where it gets weird.

With strong representation on the lower house ethics committee, Rousseff's Workers' Party could make or break any vote on Cunha's fate. In other words, the beleaguered president could, in theory, protect her nemesis.

In return, this theory goes, Cunha could shelve those impeachment petitions and the allies-turned-enemies would transform into frenemies.

The G1 news site ran a Cold War-era photo of a nuclear bomb test on Thursday. "Dilma and Cunha's mutual destruction," the headline read.

 
Joining those reported negotiations in the capital Brasilia was Rousseff's mentor and presidential predecessor, Workers' Party hero Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, who "arrived in secret," O Estado de S. Paulo said.

According to the daily, Cunha was clear about what he wants from Rousseff.

"If I am treated well, maybe I'll have good will toward the government," he was quoted as saying.

But there's unlikely to be any neat ending to the episode, observers say. Ministers describe Cunha as "a wounded wild beast" who remains dangerously unpredictable, O Estado reported.

For Brazilians, the Rousseff impeachment saga is a painful reminder of how their giant country -- the world's seventh biggest economy and the host of next year's Rio Olympics -- seems unable to escape corruption and chaos.

Brazil only returned to democracy in 1985 after two decades of military dictatorship, during which Rousseff was tortured as a young leftist guerrilla.
If impeached, Rousseff would be the second president to suffer that fate: in 1992, Fernando Collor de Mello was impeached on corruption charges and forced to resign.

Collor resurrected as a senator, only to face new charges this August -- for Petrobras-related corruption.

Fleischer says the sole ray of light is the fearless conduct of prosecutors and federal police running that Petrobras probe, known as Operation Car Wash.

Car Wash "is the first time in the history of Brazil that the corruptors... were put in jail. This never happened before," the professor said.

"They're cleaning up things and correcting things. That may be a positive."

Source: AFP