Thereza Collor denies authorship of open letter to Renan.

247 – Businesswoman Thereza Collor has once again denied authorship of a text circulating online criticizing Senate President Renan Calheiros (PMDB-AL) since 2007. Titled "Thereza Collor's Letter," the text offers a negative interpretation of Renan Calheiros' political career, launches a series of accusations against the senator, and reproduces the list of assets he submitted to the Regional Electoral Court. Read the information from Mônica Bergamo, of Folha de S.Paulo, and the letter in its entirety:

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An open letter to Senator Renan Calheiros (PMDB-AL), attributed to Thereza Collor, was shared by more than 42 people on Facebook. The "impeachment muse" clarifies: "Five years ago, this text circulated throughout Brazil and was even published in newspapers with my signature, but it is not of my authorship." Her father, the sugar mill owner João Lyra, is cited as having contributed US$1 million to Calheiros' campaign for congressman.

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The article was written by former congressman Mendonça Neto from Alagoas, who died in 2010. "You know how to manipulate people, their ambitions, their sins, and their weaknesses," the text says, published in an Alagoas newspaper at the time of the scandal that led Calheiros to resign from the Presidency of the Senate in 2007 to avoid being impeached.

Letter to Renan Calheiros

"Cattle life. Marked people. Happy people." Renan's cows give birth 24 hours a day. There's plenty of grass and foolish people in Murici and Alagoas! One quality I admire in you: your knowledge of the human soul. You know how to manipulate people, their ambitions, their sins, and their weaknesses.

From the naive boy I brought from Murici to become a state representative in 1978 – who believed in the necessary purity of opposition politics within the military dictatorship – you, Renan Calheiros, have built a trajectory that would make all the good men who cower and never learn to dare like the bandits envious.

You are a bold man. You understood, at a certain point, that victory does not belong to good men, unarmed by this fury of recklessness, which is to win at any cost. And you decided to arm yourself. Whatever the price, Renan Calheiros would never again be Olavo's son, fighting with the powerful Omena family at the São Simeão sugar mill, in unequal forces and money.

He decided that he wouldn't confront them head-on; he would find a shortcut, a thousand tricks to defeat them, and, who knows, one day he would defeat them all, those pompous dandies who had employees whose sole job was to fan, for hours, an enormous fan over the sugar mill owners' table, so that the mosquitoes of Murici (in Murici, even the mosquitoes are voracious) wouldn't bite the rosy complexions of their masters: Who knows, one day, with the leverage of politics, wouldn't Renan Calheiros be the sole owner, a gatekeeper-turned-dock colonel, of the lands and the sugar mill where his humble father used to go to collect the money from the sugarcane to pay for his children's education, and tipped his hat to the Omena family, powerful and dangerous.

Renan dreamed of being a big shot, at any cost. He sold his soul, like Goethe's Faust, and asked for fame and wealth in return.

When you and then-Congressman Geraldo Bulhões, colleagues of Fernando Collor in the caucus, approached him and allied yourselves with him, the new Renan began to be born.

Some say you are an illiterate of rare polish, an intuitive. That you have never read any author of economics, sociology, or law. Your university colleagues said so. Far from being a demerit, this thick literary ignorance of yours makes your talent as a winner stand out even more. I believe it was the poor house, on a bare street in Murici, that provided you with the fuel for your hatred of poverty and being poor. And Renan Calheiros decided that, if his politics would not serve the people in any way, it would serve him in every way. He would be received in palaces, in millionaires' mansions, in foreign congresses, like a prince, and when he reached that point, all his traumas bathed in the Mundaú River would be rechristened in Faust and opulence; "There I will have the woman I want, in the bed I choose. I will be a friend of the King."

Machado de Assis, naively, said through one of his characters: "The soul, like the earth, will have an incorruptible tunic." Later, however, faced with the inexorability of the dishonest man's fate, he warned: "Get dirty, you fatso! Do you want to get dirty? Get dirty, you fatso!"

In 1986, Renan Calheiros was elected federal deputy for the second time. During this term, the globalized Renan was born: a results-oriented manager with boundless ambition, gradually burying all scruples of conscience. In his case, nothing remained of the shipwreck of youthful illusions! Not even a shred of shame. The sugar mill owner João Lyra sponsored his campaign with US$1.000.000. The money was delivered, in installments, to his driver Milton, while you waited, sipping drinks, at the old Hotel Luxor, on Avenida Assis Chateaubriand, now the Labor Court.

And he ran a rich and impressive campaign, because among his voters were poor communist university students and dazzled sugar mill owners, following him on the dusty roads of Alagoas, enraptured by his fearlessness in winning at any cost. The fearlessness of the mountaineer, who either reaches the top of the mountain – and it's all his, mountain and glory – or dies. Or like the poker player, who bluffs and doesn't tremble, who bluffs laughing, and whose indecipherable eyes intimidate the opponent. And he bets everything. And wins. In the bluff.

"You, Renan, have no soul, only appetites," they say. And who in Brazilian politics does? Who in this Planalto Palace, the center of the great national swindles, acts according to reasons and objectives of public interest? ACM, who, on the verge of being impeached, slipped through the door of resignation and was re-elected as the great colonel of a paradoxical Bahia, who displays talents with the same nonchalance with which he cultivates corrupt individuals? José Sarney, who hitched a ride with Carlos Lacerda, with Juscelino, and now, after taking a beating from you, has become your old father, passing on to you the alchemy of 50 years of roguery?

Who has the moral authority to demand consistency of principles from you? President Lula, who orchestrated the "workers' coup," as Brizola called it, and today has an office boy of Brizola himself working for him in his Ministry? Who taxed retirees, who weren't even retirees during Collor's government, and bent the Supreme Federal Court to his will? In the old saying of scoundrels, everyone does it, lies, steals, betrays. Thus, Senator, you are merely the smartest of them all, who, even with glaring facts of impropriety, of public and private misconduct, has the near unanimity of this Senate of moral Quasimodos to shield you.

And a simple-looking young man, with a backwoods name – Siba – is the valet of his safe-conduct to impunity, and he will do everything to ensure that his banner – acquitting Renan in the Ethics Committee – consecrates his career. I don't know if this Siba is a prefix for sybarite, but, as his lawyer in pectore, he will have a life of luxury guaranteed. A good guy at his job, look at the cunning way he defends his boss... He's more realistic than the King. And on the other side, the sheriff of the military dictatorship, who, from the outset, warns: I want to acquit Renan.

What a Magistrate!... What a Senate!... I'm going to reproduce here what you declared as assets to the Regional Electoral Court in 2002. Check it out, it has your signature:

1) House in Brasília, Lago Sul, R$ 800;
2) Apartment in the Tartana building, Ponta Verde, R$ 700;
3) Apartment in Flat Alvorada, DF, worth R$ 100;
4) House in Barra de São Miguel worth R$ 350.

AND THAT'S ALL.

You didn't declare any farms, not even a single head of cattle! Not to mention that your apartment in the Tartana Building is actually worth more than R$1 million, and your house in Barra de São Miguel, bought from a pharmaceutical merchant, is worth more than R$2.000.000. Just from that, Renan, you DECLARE POSSESSING ASSETS OF AROUND R$5.000.000.

If you earned a gross R$2 million in 24 years in office, how did you buy the rest? And the farms, and the radio stations, all in the names of front men? What moral legacy are you leaving for your descendants?

You will go down in Alagoas' history as a dishonest, unscrupulous politician who betrays even his own family. Are you sure it's worth it? Once, a few years ago, I asked you how the biggest landowner in Murici was doing. And you replied: "I don't have a single plot of land. The family's farming vocation is Olavinho's." That's true, especially around the poker tables!

The entire country, for the most part, is calling for your removal from office. You will hardly be convicted. In Brasília, almost everyone is complicit. But look at the faces of the people on the street, read carefully what they think, feel the contempt that the decent people of Alagoas feel for you and your dishonest and deceitful behavior. If asked today, the people would shut down Congress. Because of people like you!

Please spread this letter of mine throughout Brazil, to see if Congress will finally feel ashamed.

The people of Alagoas are grateful.