Cruvinel sees the CPI as a lose-lose game.
According to the journalist, who was once the main columnist for Globo and president of EBC, both the government and the opposition are likely to emerge defeated.
247 - After a brief quarantine, journalist Tereza Cruvinel is returning to work, with her sharp pen, on her blog. Free themeThis Sunday, she will publish her analysis of the Joint Parliamentary Inquiry Commission into the Carlos Cachoeira case. Read it here:
A lose-lose game
I follow, from some distance, the buzz surrounding the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry that promises the end of the world by revealing the underworld of relations between parties, politicians, and the racketeer Carlinhos Cachoeira. Some CPIs devastate the political landscape, destroy careers and reputations, and end up altering the dynamics of the political game. Others die melancholically, producing tons of paperwork and no consequences. Regrettably, few CPIs have produced effective institutional and legal changes capable of preventing the repetition of the same crimes. One of them, the one about the "dwarfs of the Budget" in 1993, bequeathed us the Bidding Law, which the succession of scandals involving public purchases and contracts suggests is in need of revision.
The Cachoeira CPI seems destined for the first group: Serious facts have already leaked from Operation Monte Carlo, by the Federal Police; the actors are high-ranking, as are the resources involved, especially through the Delta construction company. At least four parties (DEM, PT, PSDB, and PMDB) are either involved or have been splashed. Thus, this CPI should have an impact ranging from an earthquake to a tsunami. It won't be a mere ripple.
Therefore, it is strange and bordering on nonsense that both government and opposition members are so keen on its establishment. If the interest were in producing effective measures to prevent recurrences, nothing would prevent Congress from requesting and obtaining the results of the Federal Police investigations in order to, based on them, develop laws and corrective measures. Okay, that's not the point; the parties just want a platform and a firing point against their adversaries in an election year. On this stage, they will dance a kind of dragnet dance, each trying to drag their opponents into the rain. Now Senator Demóstenes already has company from the PSDB and PT parties, such as Governors Perilo (GO) and Agnelo (DF). Others will join the dance, from both sides.
The tactic may be misguided. For an opposition that has been on the defensive for ten years – although it brought the PT and the government to the ropes, but not to the ground, in 2005 – no gain can come from a CPI that will begin by crucifying a senator who was an icon of moralism. The elements for the expulsion of Demóstenes are clear and strong, making a CPI unnecessary.
The government should know that there is no good CPI (Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry) for those in power. Even more so when a construction company with substantial contracts is suspected of belonging to the main defendant. But, arrogantly, the government did not mobilize its majority to prevent its establishment.
The Workers' Party (PT), and with emphasis on former president Lula, is accused of using the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) to disrupt the Supreme Federal Court's (STF) trial of the Mensalão scandal. This strategy, whether justified or not, is also contradictory. By "leveling down" parties and politicians, the PT would only increase public interest in the STF's judgment. Lula, upon leaving the presidency, told me in an interview with TV Brasil that one of his objectives outside of office would be to correct the narrative of the Mensalão scandal. I never saw him deny the use of those "unaccounted" funds. But he never accepted the narrative that the slush fund, the Valerioduto scheme originating from the PSDB party, and other electoral financing shenanigans are inventions of a PT gang. This is what he said in the disastrous Paris interview, when he stated that the PT did what is routinely done in Brazil. His attitude is more understandable than that of the Planalto Palace and the opposition. Tancredo Neves taught that in politics there are win-win situations, actions in which everyone profits, there are win-loss situations and lose-win situations, and also the lose-lose game, as seems to be the case with this CPI (Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry) that promises a tidal wave or tsunami for everyone.
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Truth Commission: What was President Dilma waiting for to appoint the members of the Truth Commission? Was she simply following what seems to be her usual method of dragging out problems and people until solutions become apparent? Whatever the case, this important initiative of her government has already been overshadowed by the Cachoeira CPI, with which it will compete when (and if) it is established.