Will Brazilian politics and related violence ever change? I think not.
Despite the fact that Brazil is one of the ratifying nations of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) it is highly unlikely that there will ever be any real changes in the political landscape of this country. The sad truth is that the corruption is not only systemic, but historical. Since Brazil聮s discovery and colonization the general population has turned a blind eye to the problem. I see no logical reason that anything will change now. Even the recent shuffle in the various government ministries by newly elected President Dilma Rousseff and the Federal Police investigations into gross irregularities in the Ministries of Tourism, Transport and of Agriculture will probably not produce any significant changes. In fact, all of them seem to be purely cosmetic in nature and more an exercise in face-saving than they are intended to be serious measures to root out and punish corruption.
Historical events have fostered within the average Brazilian citizen an attitude of 聯It聮s always been this way聟 it will always be this way聟 I am just one small voice聟 it does no good to complain 聳 so, I guess I will just keep my mouth shut and accept it聰. There is no public outcry like there would be in almost any other democratic nation, not here! Brazilians, by nature, are people who are extremely reluctant to complain publicly as a collective. This is a characteristic that has been exterminated in the general population as a direct result of past reprisals against those who have tried to complain in an organized way.
It would be bad enough if the problem of corruption was limited to just the federal level, unfortunately it exists at every level of government and taints everyone from the lowliest city employee to the top federal officials. Moreover, the greatest majority of the corrupt politicians and police either have immunity from prosecution which is entrenched in law or, at the very least, they have the right to a trial in a separate court system (foro privilegiado). Brazilian laws have been crafted with the specific intention of protecting the corrupt, or at least so it would seem. Without the creation of myriad new and rigorous anti-corruption laws and the abolition of this systemic immunity there can be no hope for change on the political horizon.
Not at all surprising that, when someone comes along who really wants to bring about serious change or poses a real threat to the 聯jeitinho brasileiro聰 they are assassinated, rendered powerless by some legal maneuver or simply disappear. The recent assassination of Patricia Acioli a hard-line judge in Rio de Janeiro is just the latest example of this brutal reality. Judge Acioli was to preside over around 50 cases involving suspicious deaths at the hands of members of both the Civil and Military Police forces in the region. The mere fact that she was gunned down in a hail of (twenty-one) bullets is a clear demonstration to the rest of society what is the logical end result to anyone seeking real change. The 聯lead pill聰 is the most common remedy for the headache caused by do-gooder politicians, judges, union leaders, journalists and environmental activists all across Brazil. The list of names is long, Sister Dorothy Stang (a Catholic nun born in Dayton 聳 OH and assassinated in Anap煤, Par谩 in Feb. 2005 ); Nelson Jos茅 da Silva, Erat贸stenes de Almeida Gonsalves, Jo茫o Batista Soares Lage and their driver A铆lton Pereira de Oliveira (Ministry of Labor officials ambushed in Una铆, Minas Gerais in Jan. 2004); Jos茅 Claudio Ribeiro and Maria do Espirito Santo (husband and wife environmental activists murdered in Nova Ipixuna, Par谩 in May, 2011); Tim Lopes (reporter for Globo TV network murdered in Rio de Janeiro in June, 2002); Antonio Luiz Cesar de Castro and Valdemir Antonio da Silva (mayors of two cities in Mato Groso assassinated within 2 weeks in July, 2011) and Braz Paschoalin (mayor of Jandira, S茫o Paulo assassinated Dec. 2010) and the list goes on. Worse still, of these mentioned only the killer of Tim Lopes has been brought to justice, the other cases have all but disappeared in the inept judicial process in Brazil.
What can we expect from a society where Federal Deputies can siphon off enough funds from the public coffers to build castles or Mayors to deposit billions of US Dollars in off-shore bank accounts and they not only do they go unpunished, but the public still votes for them in future elections? Signing the UNCAC is nothing less than a cruel joke, a slap in the face to the common citizen. How the United Nations can sit idly by, saying or doing nothing, while corruption runs rampant in one of the signatory countries is beyond me. I guess that the Convention itself is more for appearance sake and the UN is really more concerned about not offending major world economies than eliminating wide-spread corruption.
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