Brazil’s Temer rushes to get Congress to block corruption

Brazilian President Michel Temer is in a fight for his political life after the Attorney General Rodrigo Janot filed corruption charges against him, the first time ever that this has happened to a president while in office.
Janot accused Temer of accepting bribes to favor the business interests of JBS, Brazil’s largest meat producer. This accusation came after Joesley Batista, one of the owners of JBS, handed over secret recordings of his conversations he had with Temer. In the recordings, the president can be heard urging Joesley to keep up the monthly payments by JBS to jailed Eduardo Cunha, the former powerful speaker of the House of Representatives.
These corruption allegations are part of the ongoing Carwash investigation being led by the Federal Police and the attorney general’s office, now in its third year. Scores of high-ranking politicians and businessmen have been jailed and sentenced to, in some cases, up to 14 years in prison, for bribery schemes that involve the state oil giant Petrobras and the Odebrecht construction company, the largest in Latin America.
Temer gave a combative press conference last week denying the corruption allegations made against him, saying that no concrete proof had been presented against him, and that the allegations were mere conjecture.
The president is now rushing to meet and court congressional representatives from various parties — that form his administration’s ruling alliance in Congress — in order to promise them government funds for projects in their home states and positions in government ministries and public companies. In return, these politicians will vow to block the corruption probe in Congress.
The Correio Braziliense newspaper reported this week that since Temer faces three corruption charges, this will make it more expensive for his administration to win the loyalty of deputies. The government has R$40 billion ($12 billion) in discretionary funds from its budget to finance parliamentary appropriations.
Janot sent the corruption charges to the Supreme Court. The court in turn sent them to the Constitution and Justice Commission of the lower house of Congress to study. The commission has 66 members, and according to the O Globo newspaper, Temer met with at least 16 members on Tuesday alone, in a bid to win them over.
If a simple majority of the commission vote to accept the charges, then the whole of the House of Representatives will have to vote on the issue. If approved by the House, the charges return to the Supreme Court, which would then put President Temer on trial for corruption. He would have to take a six-month leave of absence from the presidency, which would seriously affect his reform agenda that is already encountering heavy resistance in Congress.
Temer has been trying to push through a reform package, which would overhaul the government’s pension system by raising the minimum retirement age, and is trying to loosen Brazil’s notoriously strict work rules to allow Brazilians more flexibility in working part-time and allow the outsourcing of labor. But if Congress decides to accept the corruption charges against him, it seems highly unlikely that his reforms will be approved unscathed.
“The accusations against Temer are very strong from the judicial viewpoint, with recordings that show the president in compromising situations. But in the end, it’s a political decision,” said Mauricio Santoro, professor of international relations at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, in an interview with Arab News.
But Santoro believes that Temer may have enough support in Congress to be able to dismiss the investigation.
“At this moment, despite all the problems, the president still has the necessary support to stop this probe. The larger challenges that Temer faces is keeping the PSDB party in his coalition, and in containing the opposition wing within his own PMDB party, that is organizing around Sen. Renan Calheiros,” explained Santoro.
A rock-bottom approval rating of only 7 percent, one of the lowest in Brazil’s recent history, has made Temer’s life more difficult.
“Ever since the corruption charges against Temer were filed, the government’s capability of bringing forward the reforms has been negatively affected. The closer we come to the general elections in 2018, it becomes harder for Temer to get congressional support among deputies to vote on unpopular reform measures,” said Santoro. “The most probable scenario is a weakening of the reforms, with the withdrawal of the more controversial items,” he added.

Source: Arab News