|
The leader of the government in the Senate, Aloízio Mercadante (PT-SP), affirmed, that the president of the PTB, Deputy Roberto Jefferson, must present the Congress, "as quickly as possible," with proof of the accusations that appeared in the newspaper, Folha de S. Paulo.
He said that this is the only way for actions to be taken. On Monday, June 6, the Folha published an interview in which Jefferson charged lawmakers from the PL and the PP with having received monthly allowances of US$ 12.27 thousand (30 thousand reais) from the financial secretary of the PT, Delúbio Soares, in exchange for voting with the Administration.
From the Senate rostrum Mercadante warned that lawmakers who happen to be involved in this alleged scheme of corruption "will pay dearly."
The Senator also pointed out that, if the president of the PTB fails to produce evidence of the charges he made, he must receive suitable punishment.
Mercadante said that it is necessary to await the investigations of the Comptroller-General's Office of the Chamber of Deputies to decide whether the accusations are sufficiently well-founded to open a "full-scale" investigation.
The government leader affirmed that, if Deputy Roberto Jefferson was aware of these irregularities, it was his duty as a public figure to denounce them to the Comptroller-General's Office of the Chamber, so that appropriate investigations could be conducted.
The leader of the PL in the Senate, Marcelo Crivela (RJ), occupied the tribune to call for the installation of a process to deprive Deputy Roberto Jefferson of his Congressional seat.
The president of the party, Deputy Waldemar Costa Neto (SP), filed a petition, yesterday, with the Chamber's Ethics Council for the same purpose.
For his part, Senator Tasso Jereissati (PSDB), from the state of Ceará, affirmed that there is "systemic corruption at all levels and in all sectors of the federal government with the objective of withdrawing public funds."
In Jereissati's opinion, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva "is boxed in" by the accusations of corruption in his Administration.
Agência Brasil
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.