Cafezinho: Media hides Demosthenes' accusations against opposition leaders.

By Miguel do Rosário, from Coffee

Demóstenes Torres, a former senator, attacked, in an article, the main leaders of the DEM party and the opposition.

The media, surprisingly, hid it.

(Note: Agripino Maia was recently indicted by the Attorney General's Office on charges of receiving bribes exceeding R$ 1 million).

On the front pages of the newspapers, only the ever-present Alberto Youssef, denouncing the PT treasurer.

When Youssef himself denounced Aécio Neves, saying that the politician received a monthly payment of $120 from a scheme between Furnas and Bauruense, there was no front-page news, no prominence given to it.

Is Youssef's testimony the only one that counts, and even then, only those testimonies that implicate the PT (Workers' Party)?

Now, the question remains: Won't the PT senators go to the podium to demand explanations from Agripino Maia and Ronaldo Caiado, two "champions of ethics" whom the media constantly puts on national television to lecture them about the corruption scandals?

What Demosthenes said about Agripino Maia: "Caiado didn't dare defend me, he betrayed me, but, regarding Agripino Maia, a figure who is hardly republican, he said that he deserves the benefit of the doubt. Few people know, but the politician from Rio Grande do Norte and his running mates in 2010 benefited from the "Goiás scheme," mediated by Ronaldo Caiado."

Regarding Caiado: "You steal, lie, and betray."

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Full text of the article, published in a newspaper from Goiás, Diário da Manhã.

Ronaldo Caiado: a voice in search of a brain.

I made a personal choice, given the turbulence I faced, to remain silent until justice delivered its final verdict and declared me innocent, as I truly am. I have already obtained two injunctions from the Supreme Federal Court (STF) and one from the Superior Court of Justice (STJ), suspending the proceedings against me because, in truth, I was the victim of a major conspiracy that will ultimately be exposed. I never wanted to publicly reveal my story before there was a definitive decision on the legality of the fabricated evidence against me and even on its content; that is, I do not refuse to address the merits of the wiretaps, even if they are illegal.

I suffered all kinds of accusations, intellectual and moral plunder, desertions and counterfeits, but I resisted it all because I will empty them of meaning.

More than the decisions of higher authorities, there are several undeniable truths. I have never been accused of embezzling a single cent of public funds: no one says I stole money from roads, bridges, hospitals, schools... Nothing.

An expert report conducted by the Public Prosecutor's Office itself, and never officially released, asserts that I could have assets 11 percent greater than I possess; proof that there is no illicit enrichment, that the apartment I financed with Banco do Brasil had all installments paid by direct debit from a current account, whose only source of income is my salary, with 27 years of payments remaining. The insinuation that I had a current account abroad fell apart, nothing even came close to being proven, and in the clutches of the press I continue to be occasionally attacked. Moreover, all the members of the Public Prosecutor's Office who harass me have a higher standard of living than mine, and many share identical tastes. I accuse them of nothing, but why then is what they possess legal and what I have not?

The accusation against me was that I was a friend of Carlos Cachoeira. Was? No, I am. I don't live like Lula and José Dirceu, nor like a bunch of hypocrites. I have nothing to hide and nothing to fear.

I cried out from the podium for an investigation, for the right to a defense and due process, all in vain. In a summary trial, I was vilified and humiliated, something that doesn't happen to the parliamentarians involved in Operation Lava Jato, who contributed to the embezzlement of billions of dollars from Petrobras' coffers. The PT and government supporters vilified me in an attempt to derail the Mensalão trial. The PSDB decided to save Marconi Perillo, who spent a fortune from public funds to finance his acquittal. The "ethical" members of the Senate saw an opportunity to get rid of someone who was keeping them out of the national news. Judas Ronaldo Caiado reinvented the thesis that there are no betrayals of people, only of principles, and that for this reason he was authorized to do anything with any moral standing, including betrayal, like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and so many other degenerates. He saw this as an opportunity to rise politically. All I had to do was sink into the hole, and he did so with pleasure.

Today, regrettably, I emerge from the self-imposed isolation I had retreated into to address statements made to the "panel" of Veja magazine, in which the senator for Goiás, Ronaldo Caiado, claims that I am a great disappointment in his life and a traitor.

I confess I was surprised. Ronaldo ran a campaign in which he used my number, 251, and my slogan "defend Goiás". He never made any pronouncements about me, even in the presence of his supporters who sometimes attacked me, believing that this would garner votes from his fan base.

During that period, he sent several messages trying to "reassure" me, without getting a response, and one day, when I wasn't yet a candidate, he found me at a commercial establishment called "Jerivá," as I was leaving the bathroom, and tried to talk to me, with a big smile, which prompted me to avoid him.

Ronaldo is a pathological liar and has a dubious behavior, sometimes lukewarm, sometimes disingenuous. His performance on the podium is inconsistent. The Garotinho case is symptomatic. Ronaldo accuses him of forming a criminal gang, which is only on social media; Garotinho accuses him of being a traitor for abandoning me; Caiado returns to the podium and asks Garotinho for a deal. The last two videos have disappeared from social media.

But, in short, Caiado acted like a kind of older brother to me, talking about the affinity of our ideas, that he was a non-belligerent conservative, sparing no one, not even his ancestors, and that he desired a liberal future for Brazil.

Ronaldo was indeed part of Carlos Cachoeira's network of friends; he was even his son's doctor. But Ronaldo Caiado's relationship wasn't solely based on friendship. Just look at his accounting for printing, air travel, and personnel expenses, particularly from the 2002, 2006, and 2010 campaigns, and you'll see the fingerprints of the fallen angel. Follow the money.

Caiado didn't dare defend me, he betrayed me, but, regarding Agripino Maia, a figure who is anything but republican, he said that he deserves the benefit of the doubt. Few people know, but the politician from Rio Grande do Norte and his running mates in 2010 benefited from the "Goiás scheme," mediated by Ronaldo Caiado.

Ronaldo Caiado is the boss of one of the most harmful scoundrels in Goiás, the retired civil police delegate, Eurípedes Barsanulfo, who was the best friend of Deuselino Valadares, the federal police delegate who made a "report," according to "Carta Capital," accusing me of being a beneficiary of the illegal lottery. This report never officially appeared, but it served for his PSOL party to use it to file a complaint against me before the Senate ethics committee. At the end of last year, the Goiânia newspaper Diário da Manhã published a signed article accusing the said delegate of having forged the document at the behest of his political boss. Who was he? Ronaldo Caiado, everyone knows. Incidentally, Eurípedes Barsanulfo, he was indeed a leading figure in the slot machine business in Goiás. Ronaldo even once asked me to intervene with Carlos Cachoeira to expand Eurípedes's illegal gambling activities. I simply told him, as was true, that I was unaware of any illegal activity on the part of Cachoeira.

Ronaldo Caiado is an opportunist. Many who live outside of Goiás must imagine him to be a consistent figure, one who emerged from the desires of the streets, a puritan. Not at all! In politics, he's a professional brothel worker. Two facts can illustrate his Fouché-like character. First, in 2006, Caiado encouraged me to run for governor. When my candidacy faltered, back in August, he could be seen accompanying both candidate Maguito and another, Alcides. In his worst moral decline, he was even filmed on the campaign stage of candidate Vanusa Valadares, wife of the current mayor Eronildo Valadares in Porangatu. Therefore, being the quadruped he is, he had his paws simultaneously in three canoes.

Last year his degradation expanded. Ronaldo Caiado, in his eagerness to be a Senate candidate alongside Marconi Perillo, sought out Aécio Neves and Agripino Maia (the latter financially dependent on Perillo) to form a ticket with national coherence, despite their history of disagreements. Even more embarrassingly, he sent his own wife to an event in the city of Americano do Brasil, where the ignorant woman, besides speaking, advocated voting for Perillo, claiming he was a great statesman and that she hoped for his re-election for the good of Goiás. Let's remember: it was Perillo who had dealings with Cachoeira, not me.

Summary of the opera: the tenor rejected the mezzo-soprano's advances and told the baritone to go find his own way. Ronaldo ended up in the arms of Iris Rezende, whom he had accused all his life of being a corrupt man in whose presence others would appear as mere "street urchins".

In his twisted pattern of saying one thing and doing another, Ronaldo Caiado wants the DEM party to be dissolved in order to join Íris Rezende's PMDB for a very simple reason: he aspires to be in a party that will give him the structure to run for governor of Goiás. If the DEM merges with the PTB, he will go to the PMDB, a constitutionally accepted possibility for party affiliation. Officially, he will oppose it. He will appear consistent until the end, a pure opportunist. He will follow the orders of his political boss, ACM Neto, who financed his last campaign in Goiás and who assured him, should he lose the election, the comfortable position of health secretary in Salvador, a region where Caiado usually spends his vacations at the expense of the OAS company.

Anyone who thinks Ronaldo Caiado is spontaneous is mistaken. Everything is meticulously calculated. Why didn't he come to the streets of Goiânia for the march and preferred São Paulo? Because in Goiânia he would be booed. And why São Paulo? Because it was easier to lie. I challenge you to show a video of him in the middle of the demonstrators on Paulista Avenue in São Paulo. Only peripheral things appear. He took a picture wearing a fascist t-shirt – not because Lula doesn't deserve boos, he deserves them more than the others – and gave reasons for a justified outcry in favor of an unjust person. As is his character, he was pretending to walk in the march. In this aspect, he resembles the Goiás Federal Deputy Giuseppe Vecci, who participated in the march in Goiânia because he is an illustrious unknown, despite being elected. Irony: Vecci marched because he is a nobody in the shadows, Caiado abstained because he is one in the sun. It appears that the chief treasurer, Jaime Rincon, head of the Goiás state agency for public works, also performed maneuvers on the walkway.

Ronaldo Caiado was one of the rapporteurs for the political reform in the Chamber of Deputies, always claiming that his motivation was political consistency, which practice has shown not to be his strong suit. He says he would like to have a confrontation with Lula in the presidential election. I think that would be great; the two are morally equivalent. One has already been unmasked, the other could be tomorrow.

One day, in my political office in the southern sector of Goiânia, there was a phone call between Ronaldo Caiado and Tião Caroço, now a member of the Court of Accounts for the municipalities of Goiás. Caroço brought news that upset the Senator, who then shouted: "Tell Marconi that I'll settle things with him however he wants, with my fists, with a knife, with a revolver!" This episode became public and caused major damage to the braggart, who, to my surprise, denied everything. One day, telling me the story, he denied having said that, forgetting that I was an eyewitness.

So now, Ronaldo Caiado, I want to see if you're really a man. I'm exposing myself on the same terms you offered to the cowardly Marconi Perillo.

I remember the veneration my father had as a child for the great Emival Caiado and for his father, the lawyer Edenval Caiado, who would be ashamed to see one of his sons run away from the fight.

In your speeches, you say that Caiado doesn't steal, doesn't lie, and doesn't betray. You steal, lie, and betray.

Perhaps you interpreted my silence as a synonym for cowardice, for pusillanimity. Those words don't exist in my dictionary. I can't say you're a bad character, because you simply aren't. You're, in fact, a kind of opportunistic and boastful Zelig.

You should go to Brasília on your white horse, park it in the Senate cloakroom, and climb up to the podium to do what you already do: neigh, neigh.

Leave me alone, Senator. Continue fading into anonymity. It's your destiny. I'm no longer driven by political interests. I consider Marconi Perillo and Íris Rezende to be vermin just like you. Go on with your life; if you mock me again, I won't spare you. Keep pretending you're innocent, and remember you're not in the gutter because I have no vocation for being an informer. Take your precautionary measures and play dead.

Last year marked the centenary of Carlos Lacerda's birth, and a horde of incompetent people began labeling anyone a "Lacerdista," which for them simply means someone who is loud and boisterous. Ronaldo Caiado claims to be inspired by Lacerda. That's a lie. Lacerda was a translator of Shakespeare, the first Brazilian to write a novel about a quilombo (a settlement of escaped slaves), and spoke and wrote like a classicist. He demolished presidents and adversaries. Elected governor, he was undoubtedly the best administrator of Guanabara. Ronaldo Caiado has never managed to finish reading a book. Due to his French background, the closest he came to finishing one was "The Boy with the Green Finger," but he found it too "profound." Ronaldo Caiado is just a voice searching for a brain.

Demosthenes Torres is a former senator and public prosecutor.