For the first time in more than two decades, since the dictatorship, Brazil has a government that is widely seen as illegitimate. It is seen this way, not only by its citizens, but in much of the world. Its image is sullied, deteriorating by the week, with mounting scandals engulfing the highest levels of government. In June, the third minister of the interim government resigned amid charges of corruption. Inconveniently, it was the minister of tourism, as the country faced calls by international public health experts for moving the Olympics due to the Zika virus.
And then there is the interim president, Michel Temer (the vice president who is serving during President Dilma Rousseff's impeachment trial), who had the "unifying" political acumen to appoint a cabinet of all rich white men (in a country where half the population identifies as Afro-Brazilian or mixed race). Fifteen out of 23 of these officials are reportedly under investigation. Last month, he was himself directly implicated in a corruption scandal. He had previously been barred from running for office for eight years because of violations of campaign financing laws. These are the people who are trying to depose the elected president, not for corruption, but for an accounting mechanism that previous governments also used.It's true that all major political parties have been implicated in corruption. But President Rousseff, for the first time in Brazil's history, gave prosecutors that authority to go after corrupt officials, letting the chips fall where they may. It has now become clear that her opposition's main purpose in impeaching her is to impede the investigations and prosecutions of themselves and their allies.
Brazil now also has the ugly distinction of being the country with the most killings of environmental activists. It is unlikely that the new right-wing cabinet, tightly tied to agribusiness interests, will do much to prevent these murders.
This op-ed was originally published by The Hill on July 21, 2016. Read the rest here.
Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and the president of Just Foreign Policy. He is also the author of the new book "Failed: What the 'Experts' Got Wrong About the Global Economy" (2015, Oxford University Press). You can subscribe to his columns here.