|
The Brazilian Supreme Court (STF) granted unanimously, on Tuesday, December 19, a preliminary injunction voiding the Brazilian congress decision of giving itself a 91% salary hike.
On December 14, the leadership on both houses of congress had passed the raise that would make Brazilian congressmen the best paid in the world. The Supreme justices ruled on a suit brought up by three House representatives who opposed the wage increase. They are Fernando Gabeira from Rio's Green Party; Raul Jungmann from Pernambuco's PPS and Carlos Sampaio from São Paulo's PSDB. Told about the Supreme's ruling, the speaker of the House, Aldo Rebelo from São Paulo's Communist Party of Brazil, started negotiations with the leaders of all parties to have a floor vote about the raise this Wednesday. Renan Calheiros, the president of the Senate, from Alagoas's PMDB said that his intention was to decide about the matter "as soon as possible." He didn't say, however, if he would defend the 24.500 reais (US$ 11,380) a month that the congress leadership had voted for. Late last night, Rebelo and Calheiros announced that they were thinking about backing out from their earlier wage boost decision which would give them the same monthly salary the Supreme Court ministers earn now. If the legislators, however, decide to readjust their wages according to inflation in the last four years (28.4%) then they would get 16,500 reais (US$ 7,700) a month. Many congressmen believe that there's no climate now in the country to vote for doubling their salaries as it was done. There have been a few protests in the streets and a lot of criticism in the media against the measure. But probably nothing would have happened if it weren't for the Supreme intervention. A vote from the full congress, it was already announced, will require that every candidate declares its vote. If anonymity were allowed the chances of repealing the raise would be much slimmer. Apparently, however, the so-called "low clergy," as the lesser known representatives are known, continue insisting on almost doubling their pay. The leadership has been appealing to common sense from their colleagues and recommending that the legislators accept for now a raise that would only cover inflation and at the same time continue fighting to have their salaries raised to the same level of the ministers of the Supreme. One of the options would be to get an initial 28.4% increase with gradual wage hikes in the next four years till the salary reaches the 24,500 reais they really want. Nowadays, besides the salary of 12.847 reais (US$ 5.970), which is paid 15 times a year, each congressman has a monthly allowance of 15,000 reais (US$ 7,000) for expenses on the home state office, plus 50,000 reais (US$ 23,000) for the Brasília office, plus 3,000 reais (US$ 1,400) for housing aid, besides 4,000 reais (US$ 1.900) for stamps and telephone and four monthly round-trip air tickets to their home state. When everything is computed it amounts to about 1 million reais (US$ 650,000) a year per congressman.
 |
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.