quarta-feira, 16 de março de 2016

[242] BRAZIL'S POLITICS: THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORT: EX-PRESIDENT ‘LULA’ JOINS BRAZIL’S CABINET, GAINING LEGAL SHIELD; 16mar2016


Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former president of Brazil, in front of his home in São Bernardo do Campo on Sunday.Credit
Paulo Whitaker/Reuters 

Ex-President ‘Lula’ Joins Brazil’s Cabinet, Gaining Legal Shield
By SIMON ROMEROMARCH 16, 2016

Fonte / Source: The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/world/americas/brazil-ex-president-luiz-inacio-lula-da-silva.html?ref=world&_r=0

RIO DE JANEIRO — Faced with multiple corruption investigations,Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is joining the cabinet of his successor, Dilma Rousseff, in a move that may offer him increased legal protections but intensifies the political upheaval in Latin America’s largest country.
Mr. da Silva, 70, will become Ms. Rousseff’s chief of staff, said Afonso Florence, the leader of the governing Workers’ Party in the Chamber of Deputies.
Mr. da Silva, a founder of the Workers’ Party and its most towering figure, is thrusting himself into a government that is lurching from one crisis to another. The economy is reeling from a bad slump and major corruption scandals. Ms. Rousseff is struggling for her own political survival, with protesters demanding her ouster and lawmakers pursuing impeachment proceedings against her.
“Vested with the unprecedented function of a de facto prime minister, Lula will oversee an act of political desperation to save what’s left of his project,” said Igor Gielow, a columnist for the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.
The move could offer Mr. da Silva some practical protection as prosecutors seek his arrest in a graft inquiry involving his ties to giant construction companies. Cabinet ministers are among the 700 or so senior officials in Brazil who enjoy special judicial standing, meaning they can be tried only by Brazil’s highest court, the Supreme Federal Tribunal.
Effectively, this prevents nearly all of these figures from going to prison, because trials at the court drag on for years. Nearly a third of the 594 members of Congress, including the leaders of the lower house and the Senate, are under scrutiny before the court over claims of violating laws.
Mr. da Silva, who was president from 2003 through 2010, is grappling with various investigations into his accumulation of wealth since leaving office. Stunning the political establishment, he was taken into custody for questioning this month in a federal inquiry into renovations of luxury properties by O.A.S. and Odebrecht, two scandal-plagued construction companies.

Demonstrators in São Paulo, Brazil, on Sunday [13mar2016] called for the resignation of the president amid an economic crisis and corruption scandals. CreditMiguel Schincariol/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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Mr. da Silva has insisted that he is innocent of any wrongdoing, describing the inquiries as attempts to destabilize Ms. Rousseff’s government and prevent him from returning to the presidency. He has recently begun mounting a bid to run again in 2018, denouncing political opponents and critics in the news media. 

But upon taking up his post, he will have to start with damage control. Delcídio do Amaral, a senator from the Workers’ Party, reached a plea deal with investigators in which he accused Mr. da Silva and Ms. Rousseff of obstructing corruption investigations.

“I am a prophet of chaos,” Mr. do Amaral told reporters after the Supreme Federal Tribunal accepted his plea deal, in which he implicated figures across the ideological spectrum in graft scandals, including Vice President Michel Temer and Aécio Neves, a leader of the opposition Social Democracy Party.

While Brasília braces for the return of Mr. da Silva to the daily political fray, others around the country are trying to decipher what comes next. Brazil’s currency, the real, fell sharply against the dollar on Wednesday, and the main index of the São Paulo stock exchange dropped nearly 1 percent on concerns over potential shifts in economic policy under Mr. da Silva.



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