BRASILIA: The two dozen ministers in Brazil’s new government have a lot in common: they’re white, male, conservative, often wealthy and in numerous cases face legal problems.
The question — after coming to power through the suspension of leftist president Dilma Rousseff rather than a presidential election — is whether they have enough in common with their country of 204 million.
Interim President Michel Temer held his first cabinet meeting Friday, 24 hours after assuming power in the wake of a Senate vote opening a trial against Rousseff on charges that she broke government accounting rules.
And his government vowed immediately to turn the page on the Rousseff era, saying that opposition street protests over the last year demanded an end to corruption, political paralysis and recession.
“People went on the street to seek two things: they wanted a state without corruption and they wanted an efficient state,” chief of staff Eliseu Padilha said. “Out with corruption and in with efficiency.”
Team Temer’s business-friendly credentials might suggest efficiency but on corruption the new government is hardly a model.
At least three ministers are being investigated in the vast probe into an embezzlement and bribery ring at state oil company Petrobras, perhaps the biggest corruption scandal in Brazilian history. They include key player Romero Juca, the planning minister and head of Temer’s party the PMDB.
Another three new ministers are facing other criminal probes, the specialist website Congresso em Foco, which tracks lawmakers’ legal troubles, reported Friday. And two more ministers are the sons of politicians being investigated in the Petrobras probe.
Coming after a government lead by Brazil’s first female president, Temer’s cabinet resembles a throwback to the mid-20th century — or further.
There are no women, no blacks and no one with a profile likely to appeal to the poor masses in a country suffering huge wealth disparities.
Women and blacks were represented in Rousseff’s inner circle, with 15 women serving as ministers during her first and second terms. One of those was Nilma Lino Gomes, Rousseff’s minister for women, human rights and racial equality — a post now axed by Temer.
Some of Temer’s choices seem designed to demonstrate the shift to conservative values.
Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi, is the vastly wealthy “soya king” whom Greenpeace labels one of the biggest destroyers of Brazil’s majestic Amazon rainforest.
The industry minister, Marcos Pereira, is an Evangelical preacher from the powerful Universal Church organisation and was even considered for the science post before the scientific community went up in arms.
Then there’s Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes, who until now was security chief for Sao Paulo, where he oversaw a police force accused of frequent human rights abuses, including the use of death squads to confront suspected criminal groups. In an extra twist, the man a Brazilian newspaper dubbed “Temer’s pit bull,” will also have responsibility over the now disbanded Rousseff-era ministry protecting the rights of women and racial equality.
The culture portfolio was also eliminated and folded into the education ministry, prompting an angry reaction from luminaries like musician Chico Buarque and actor Wagner Moura — as well as a flash protest at the new minister’s first public event Friday.
The absence of women has also prompted an outcry in some quarters. But the new government is not apologising.
“We tried to search for women but because of the timetable ... it was not possible,” Padilha, said, promising that non-ministerial jobs but with “a similar importance” would soon be filled by women.
Politically speaking the most important factor in the Brazilian government’s make-up is the heavy presence of former members of Congress.
Congress — where about 60 per cent of lawmakers have current or past brushes with the law — might be hugely discredited with Brazilians in general.
But the two houses of the legislature were responsible for opening the impeachment trial against Rousseff, leading to then vice president Temer’s rise to power. He has been quick to pay that debt.
The new urban affairs minister, Bruno Araujo, was the lower house deputy whose vote officially sealed the needed two-thirds majority to greenlight Rousseff’s impeachment. And Agriculture Minister Maggi was the senator who cast the equivalent vote in the upper chamber.
But the strategy is about more than mutual back rubbing.
In bringing in men from no less than 11 parties Temer has defused the standoff between the executive and legislature that left Rousseff practically powerless. When it comes to pushing through unpopular but needed economic reforms he should have congressional support — in itself a remarkable improvement in Brazilian politics.
“It is very pragmatic,” said Michael Mohallem, a law professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro.
Mohallem also said that Temer’s “180 turn” to the right, including the exclusion of minorities and women from his cabinet, was calculated, reflecting that much of Brazil is socially conservative and religious.
But the risk in picking ministers from such a tight pool is that wider Brazil may feel left out.
“There’s a clear problem there and society could make its feelings known within a couple months,” the analyst said.
—AFP
