Lessons from Brazil

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff is passing through the most trying times of her once sterling political career as she battles moves to remove her from office. On April 17 Brazil’s lower house of Congress voted 367 votes to 137 impeach her and send her to the Senate for trial. Rousseff, the first female president of […]

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff is passing through the most trying times of her once sterling political career as she battles moves to remove her from office. On April 17 Brazil’s lower house of Congress voted 367 votes to 137 impeach her and send her to the Senate for trial. Rousseff, the first female president of South America’s most populous nation is accused of steering the continent’s biggest economy into recession and using accounting trickery to hide the true size of the Brazil’s budget deficits ahead of her 2014 re-election. She has denied the charges and has accused her foes in the male-dominated lower chamber of singling her out for impeachment partly because she is a woman.
According to the corruption-monitoring group Transparency Brazil, many sitting Brazilian lawmakers are also either facing charges or are under investigation for “serious charges.” They however enjoy immunity from prosecution in regular courts but can be tried by the Supreme Federal Court. Rousseff is in trouble because a once thriving economy has rapidly declined, spawning its worst recession in 30 years. Inflation is at a 12-year high of 10.7 percent. GDP shrank by 3.8 percent last year and is expected to shrivel again in 2016 while unemployment rate, which stands at 9 percent, could soon be in double digits. This dismal economic situation has created anger on Brazilian streets.
Brazil is also enmeshed in two corruption scandal probes code-named ‘Mensalo’ and ‘Operation Car Wash.’ In the former, which preceded Rousseff’s tenure, public funds were allegedly paid to lawmakers to support government during crucial votes. In the latter, Rousseff’s left-wing Workers’ Party is said to have funded its elections from proceeds of inflated contracts involving Brazil’s biggest construction company and the state oil company Petrobras. Some $3 billion was involved in the racket that shares striking similarities to the $15 billion allegedly disbursed by the National Security Adviser’s Office to PDP chieftains ahead of last year’s elections.
A BBC report detailing some of Brazil’s scandals said contracts awarded by Petrobras were inflated and the proceeds passed to its executives as well as Workers’ Party leaders who rechanneled the money into funding campaigns. In a country where the public does not tolerate such shenanigans, nationwide protests followed. Though the Brazilian Congress itself is enmeshed in corruption allegations, it has sided with citizens in this battle. MPs voted against Rousseff while her mentor and predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whom she tried to protect by offering him an appointment, has also been detained. More than 40 people, including a former president, ruling party chiefs and top government officials have been put behind bars in connection with Brazil’s ‘Operation Car Wash’ scandal, in contrast to Nigeria where so far, nobody has been jailed in the $15 billion ‘Dasukigate’ scandal.
In Nigeria, people jump to the defence of corrupt officials based on religion, ethnicity or other primordial sentiments. This is why of the 40 former public office holders and businessmen involved in the fuel subsidy payments scam worth N2.53 trillion, nobody has been sentenced since the story broke in 2014. Yet in Brazil the people are not appeased until the president herself is jailed. As Nigeria tries to deepen its democracy, the important lesson it can draw from Brazil and from South Africa, where President Jacob Zuma was recently indicted by the country’s highest court for illegally spending $23 million of public funds to upgrade his private country-home, is the courageous roles played by the judiciary in both cases. This is an indication that the war against corruption can only be won if the different arms of government collaborate with one another. The protesting crowds in Brazil also showed that we should not be complacent with politicians. Nigerians should learn a lesson here, that the fight against corruption cannot be left to EFCC, news media or civil society groups. It is everyone’s duty.