The Mafia that Governs Brazil

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I recently read a Facebook post from a person who rightfully pointed out that Brazil is far from being a democracy. In fact, the user clarified that the country has never been a democracy, at least not in the last 40 years. He begins his post with the following thought: “Today it is difficult to disassociate ourselves from politics. I’ve found out about the size of the irony that we Brazilians are in ..” He then uses irony himself to refer to the situation the country is in and how people were indoctrinated into believing that democracy reigns all over. “The generation of which I am part of was born in a democratic environment. What a good thing. A new constitution … How lucky we are! Brazil is a “young democracy”. So I heard, so they told me. I, innocent, believed. We, the innocent, believed. The problem is that Brazilians are not innocent. They were lied to all right, but that was many years ago. Today, they are innocent no more, yet they continue to allow a cabal of oligarchs, both foreign and local to determine what their lives should be like. It is not a Monarchy as the author of the post claims, but a Mafia. It is the same kind of Mafia that governs over every single western country today. Mr. Dobrinsky says that the class of people that dominate politics in Brazil are a sort of nobility, but he forgets to point what is obvious: The people are to blame for everything that has happened in the country since it became a democratic republic. It is the people who elect their representatives. How and why do people elect representatives who destroy a country like Brazil? The answer is due to ignorance. There are two other horrific details that seem to be out of the public discourse of those who complain about their government here in Brazil. Firstly, most people understand the situation and do nothing to change it, and secondly, people actually embrace the current state of disgrace the country is in. The highest degree of corruption in the history of the country is not enough to light up a fire cracker in the heart of Brazilian people, who limit their actions to innocuous street protests that do little or nothing to change things. In fact, that very same degree of corruption is brought and adopted into their own lives. Brazil’s problem is not that people are ignorant, but that people are wilfully ignorant. They learn to be ignorant from very early in their lives which is why most people still support the “jeitinho brasileiro” or the Brazilian way of doing things. That behaviour exists in the minds of members of the political mafia as much as in that of the homeless and everyone in between. It is part of people’s fabric. There are three clear examples of how deeply rooted corruption and complacency are in the Brazilian way of life. All Luiz Inacio da Silva, Dilma Rousseff and the current president Michel Temer are being investigated by a special court due to their apparent involvement in massive corruption scandals with tentacles extending to other countries in Latin America. Yet, all that Lula, Dilma and Temer show in public is arrogance, hubris, bravado. Just this week, president Temer was officially put under investigation after tapes surfaced where he asks for bribes to keep a fellow mafia member quiet about the scandals he appears to be involved in. The accusations are stacked against Temer, battered by evidence and judicial statements filed to incriminate him by the owners of one of the country’s main business groups. But Temer not only refuses to resign but has decided to move to the attack. He claims that the evidence against him is “fraudulent” and in a message to the nation urged Saturday to the Supreme Court to suspend investigations for obstruction to justice, passive corruption and criminal organization. As expected, Temer showed no proof to back his claims. Anyone would think that with the current state of affairs, Brazilians would be at least populating the streets as they did against Rousseff, but nothing even remotely close has taken place. Meanwhile, resisting at all costs seems to be the slogan of the Brazilian president, despite the fact that the situation for him only worsens as the days pass. Temer is becoming a new Nicolas Maduro. The disclosure last Friday of the judicial statements of the entrepreneurs who incriminate Temer, the owners of the meat empire JBS, brought devastating consequences. The managers describe a systematic payment of illegal donations, negotiated directly with Temer over the last 10 years, totaling up to 4.7 million reals. The maneuvers reported by the entrepreneurs took place even while the country was in the midst of the investigations of the Lava Jato case. They assert that a few months ago an intermediary of Temer demanded a commission of 5% for him to obtain a favourable decision by the organization that oversees free market competition through which JBS would obtain a profit of 200 million reals a year. Going back a few years, the informers tell how Temer managed, as vice-president of the country, to receive a monthly payment of 100,000 reais for an ally of his who had just left his position as government official. Another account tells about how Temer made a donation of another 15 million reais to the parties that […]

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