The government that turned to juice.

By Alex Solnik, for the Journalists for Democracy - The current head of the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, lawyer Gustavo Bebbiano, was responsible for distributing funds from the party fund to candidates of the PSL, of which he was the interim president.

Four days before the elections, on October 3, 2018, the national leadership of the party sent R$400 to the candidate for federal deputy for Pernambuco, Maria de Lourdes Paixão.

She received more than the presidential candidate.

She says she spent 95% of the amount at a printing company that produced 9 million leaflets and 1,7 million stickers on the eve of the election.

The printing shop's address is occupied by Almeida's "Golden Hammer" shop. The printed material is like Conceição: nobody knows about it, nobody saw it. The candidate received 274 votes.

Pernambuco is the land of the PSL, which is the party of the President of the Republic. The only one that agreed to support him. It is not known, to this day, under what conditions.

The founder and current president, Luciano Bivar, says it's not his problem. And it's true. It's more than proven that the public money was transferred by the party's national leadership, then under Bebbiano's command.

But that's only part of the story. We still need to find out where the R$400 went.

The story is a repeat of the recent mining scandal. The current Minister of Tourism, Marcelo Álvaro Antônio, also distributed money to dummy candidates in Minas Gerais, where he was the most voted-for congressman.

The party that elected the second-largest bloc in the Chamber of Deputies and the President of the Republic with a discourse of fighting corruption is showing its true colors in just 40 days of government. It's a party for hire, and that's how it works.

"A ripe orange by the roadside is either worm-eaten, Zé, or there are wasps on the tree," as the famous samba by Ataúlfo Alves used to say.