Corruption and Rebuilding Trust in Brazil's Government
For those not in the know, Brazil is going to be having a presidential election this year. The reason the title of this thread is what it is relates to the scandals that engulf all three of the current and past presidents: Current President Michel Temer, and past Presidents (in order of most recently in office) Dilma Rousseff and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula was found guilty and began serving his 12-year jail sentence for accepting bribes in early April, maintaining his innocence and that his investigation and trial were politically motivated to prevent him from running in this year's election.
There are few countries as publicly wrestling with corruption allegations in explicit quid pro quo deals between politicians and companies as Brazil.
If you're interested in a pretty decent introduction into this wild ride, the wikipedia article on Operation Car Wash--and that is how this scandal gets referred to--is a good place to start.
So, using publicly available evidence (in Portuguese if you have to), what role does corruption play in the highest political offices in Brazil, and how can Brazil begin rebuilding what seems to be a clearly shattered reputation?
tl;dr - Brazil is fucked.
Long version:
Corruption at the top level simply reflects the absolutely flexible moral standards of the population. Politicians are a mirror in which we can see the population reflected. There are thousands of problems that I could address regarding this, but the basic one is, as it has always been, education.
The number of times I've heard people saying that public money being syphoned off is no problem because "it's the govt's money" is uncountable. Most people simply cannot understand that "govt's money" is our money, that stealing it simply means less for public services and that's why the country is in such a sorry state.
Politically, the whole thing is busted. A pitiful % of the representatives was actually chosen by the popular vote. There are people that got the job because the one who was actually elected left to do something else and they got the nod (some of them aren't even from the same political party). Others got in via the "party quota", where someone gets a lot of votes and "carries" other people from his party into office (usually people that got fewer votes than others who are left out). There are almost 40 political parties, which means any negotiation is a bloody mess of special interests and shameless cash grabs (our Supreme Court had a hand in creating this last mess, just to bring the three powers into it).
And, to top it off, corruption is out of control (even with Lava Jato going full blast for years now). Almost all the big companies have been implicated one way or another (and more are still coming to light), every single political party has at least one member involved, it's a complete mess. And it's the way it has always been for decades and we all pretended not to notice.
But the fault is still with the population. Because we are the ones who don't shun the corruptors nor the corruptees. We are the ones that keep pretending nothing bad is happening because we are still ok and therefore it's better to not change anything. And we are the ones that still say nothing when a gigantic portion of the population is left to fight for scraps with zero chance of improving their lot in life, facing all kinds of dangers from state players, from criminals, from multiple sources of danger while health, education and basic human decency simply melt away, worsening bit by bit.
So yeah, Brazil can surely recover to become an attractive destination for investors again (I wouldn't hold my breath, though, it might take a wee while), but for the boots on the ground, things will suck for a while still, no matter who wins the election.
Also, the options for the presidency are all flawed, there's zero chance of things changing just because we elected someone from the sorry lot of assholes running this year.
I agree with you that all of the current candidates for presidency are flawed, but my biggest worry is about changes in the Legislative this year. People need to change their behaviour. We just don't call out them as often as we do with "the left" in social media.
Sometimes I think a parliamentary system, or something like France semi-presidential system would work better for Brazil. People would, at the very least, realize that a huge part of our problems in politics are caused by the Legislative power, not necessarily the president. But I get that what I'm saying is impossible to happen.
BTW, since I know you're brazilian, I think this thread is an interesting read to you: https://www.reddit.com/r/brasil/comments/8apovw/os_estados_unidos_n%C3%A3o_d%C3%A3o_a_m%C3%ADnima_para_o_brasil/
I lived in the US for 5 years, I'm fully aware that they don't care about us. Also, I don't expect them to. We don't give a fuck here for countries smaller than us, so I don't think we can expect them to care about us. Also, they are an extremely insular society, focused mostly on their own bellybutton. I think we are the ones who are wrong, wishing that people would pay attention to us, when the truth is that, as in the individual level, almost no one cares about what happens to others, and that's even more true on a national level.
For a parliamentary system, we would have to lose about 30 political parties, or else our parliament would dissolve every 15 days or so. I'd be happy to try, just because what we have clearly isn't working, but I think it would be a mess as well, because the people voting would remain the same.
For me, the best way to explain this is that recent poll about the strike, where 80+% of the people supported the lorry drivers, but an even bigger percentage was against paying for any cost associated with giving into their demands, which perfectly illustrates the general thinking here: we need to change everything, but I don't want to be affected by it. Which is a recipe for disaster, obviously
One thing to mention: the english article on Wikipedia is not up-to-date with a few things. In the portuguese Wikipedia, you can get a real sense of how much corruption has been uncovered, and how much will still be uncovered in the future.
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The second box is related to arrests ordered by the Federal Police ("Fases da Operação Lava-Jato"). The third box ("Desdobramentos da Operação Lava-Jato") is related to arrests ordered by the MPF, our Public Prosecutor's Office, sometimes with the help of the Federal Police. I actually didn't know the difference until I asked one editor there.
I guess I'll start things off this morning.
Brazil is a mess. Given the breadth of just how wide this particular scandal has gotten, how many people seem to be caught up in it (I mean, it feels like it's hard to find any senior party official in Lula's party who is clean), and how many heads have actually rolled because of this, I end up being a little optimistic and wistful. Optimistic in that the between the executive branch and judiciary branch, the Brazilian government seems wholly willing to protect its integrity by prosecuting even the most powerful members caught up in scandal, whether they are in power or not.
Wistful in the sense that I wish, as an American, we had a bit more of a stomach for that sort of hard-nosed, partisans-may-care attitude when it comes to stuff like obstruction of justice or appearing to obstruct justice (depending on how you see the not-greatly-communicated firing of James Comey).
What I don't know, and what I'm curious to know, is how this scandal works itself out among Brazil's voters. Do Brazilians trust that their government is doing its level best to clean house, or do the allegations that still surround Temer, who is the acting president since Rousseff was impeached, hang over everything? After the very obvious display of corruption that was the World Cup, and the very well used Soccer Stadiums that were built and disrupted so many Brazilians for good cause (this is sarcasm), do Brazilians take this as par for the course? I can easily imagine a response being along the lines of: "Oh yes, Brazil must do this because it has gotten so obvious that no one in the world will trust Brazil if they don't at least appear to tackle corruption. It will hit the state's pocket books if they don't."
People in Brazil definitely want to take the corrupt politicians out, but I would argue that most of them have absolutely no idea where to begin with. To begin with, MBL (Free Brazil Movement is a rough translation) are a farce, they spread fake news and blind hate to anyone in the left to pander to their audience of brazilians who never cared about politics to begin with, and now are treating politics like a soccer match between two teams. They currently have some 2kk followers on Facebook and who knows how many people in the various WhatsApp groups. WhatsApp will definitely play a role in the spread of fake news in this election cycle.
The problem is that since many brazilians simply don't know how politics work, they still vote to the president as if he was the prime minister of the country. Sure, our president does have executive power, but he doesn't form a government simply by getting a majority of the votes. They have to appoint coalition members to important government positions that can influence government purchases, which is the root of many corruptions cases in Brazil.