|
Brazilian congressmen have postponed the voting over their own salary increase for next year when a new Congress will be in power. The legislators were forced to vote when a 91% hike decided by the parties leadership was challenged by the Brazilian Supreme court, which ordered that the wage increase be put to a vote before the whole Congress.
The matter will not even be discussed by this legislature anymore since the party leaders could not get to an agreement. For the salary boost to be voted at least one leader should have presented an urgency request, today, which didn't happen. The House and the Senate will only be back in session in February. Brazil's Supreme Court (Supreme Federal Tribunal) ruled Tuesday that a decision by congressional leaders to almost double the salaries of senators and representatives must be put to a vote in Congress. Party leaders and the speakers of both houses last week approved a 91% monthly salary hike from the equivalent of 5.975 US dollars to 11.375 US dollars. The move must now be approved by a vote in the Senate and lower house to be valid, the Supreme Court said on its web site. The ruling was supported by a majority of its members, which was described as "unconstitutional". The Supreme Court addressed the issue following a petition from the minority Popular Socialist Party that voted against the increase which it considered "immoral". Lower house speaker Aldo Rebelo said Congress will abide by the Supreme Court's ruling. Party leaders also agreed to hold talks to discuss a new proposal for the pay increase. Brazilian lower house representatives salaries actually account for about 20% of the total income they receive, which also includes benefits such as gasoline, home allowances and funds to hire up to 20 employees. The 91% salary increase compares with an annual rate of inflation of 3% in the first eleven months of 2006, and threatened to prompt similar moves by state legislators. A move which is not considered encouraging for the reputation of Congress and other regional legislatives that have been exposed in the last two years to mounting corruption scandals. Furthermore the controversy became public when Congress is in the midst of an intense debate over the monthly national minimum salary which could finally be raised from 350 Reais to 375 Reais equivalent to 175 US dollars. The impact of the increase sent shock waves to Brazilian public opinion and a woman simulating alienation, walked up to a member of Congress and stabbed him slightly in the back complaining bitterly about the huge salary increase. Deputy Antonio Carlos Magalhães Neto only suffered minor injuries but his case was headlines in most of Brazil's main cities as an example of "public indignation" with Congressional "offensive abuse". The Catholic Church instructed that all parishes address the issue during mass emphasizing in the sermon the need to abide by "Christian ethics". Lower House Representative Henrique Fontana, leader of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's Worker's Party, said he expects lawmakers will approve a lower pay increase when the measure is put to a vote. Bzz and Mercopress
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
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).
3 cheers for the lady in Salvador!!! But you need to take a page out of american history, you get right up on these guys, and blow their frickin' brains out!! Start taking out some of these corrupt pieces of shit and you'll start to see some changes!