Perhaps it was the fact that Calheiros was rescued by a less than convincing 40-to-35 vote margin, with six key abstentions, after a closed-door session. Or it might have been the army of heavies with stun guns deployed to safeguard the Senate chambers from prying eyes. Whatever the reason, the backlash suggests that Latin America’s biggest and perhaps unruliest country will no longer turn the other cheek to official misdeeds. Even allies doubt Calheiros can survive as Senate president, with further legislative and possibly court showdowns looming, and there are other signs, too, that Brazil is at a turning point. Last month the Brazilian Supreme Court indicted 40 Brazilian rainmakers in a massive money-for-votes scheme, including many former top aides and allies of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The defendants face 113 counts, from pocketing public money to money laundering. The decision followed a painstaking probe by the Brazilian attorney general, a two-year congressional investigation and groundbreaking reporting by the combative Brazilian media. “Something is definitely happening among Brazilians,” says Riordan Roett, director of the Western Hemisphere Program at Johns Hopkins University. “My sense is that society is finally saying ‘Enough!’ "
A decade ago, Brazil made history by launching an economic-stabilization plan, the Plano Real, beating one of the worst cases of chronic hyperinflation since Weimar Germany. Cleaning up politics could be no less significant. The Brazilian economy grew 5.4 percent in the second quarter of 2007, yet one of the biggest impediments to greater growth is official corruption. “Brazil’s challenge is to take reform to the micro level, and that’s where combating corruption and the faulty legal system come in,” says Alberto Ramos, Latin American analyst for Goldman Sachs. “If not, investment will simply go elsewhere.”
Official crookedness thrived openly under Brazil’s long dictatorship (1964–1985). That changed with the return of democracy. In 1992 Congress impeached the then president Fernando Collor de Mello on corruption charges, and the debacle led to tighter rules for spending and moving money, and a bloom of civic-watchdog groups. The legislature suddenly began launching one corruption probe after another, albeit to little effect. Corruption is always tough to strangle, and perhaps particularly so in a spendthrift Brazilian government, where public expenditures rose 49 percent between 2000 and 2006, three times GDP growth, and tens of thousands of political hacks live off patronage jobs.
Then again, as recently as a decade ago, who would have predicted Brazil was about to gain control of inflation? And there are examples of developing states that have grown beyond the stage of rampant corruption. In Latin America, Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay have led the way. Reforms of recent years have equipped Brazil for this battle, too. One sets spending caps on officials, with fines or even jail for violators. Another requires banks to notify the central bank of deposits exceeding $52,000. But perhaps the most valuable tool is popular anger. “There’s a steadily growing intolerance for corruption,” says Fernando Gabeira, a representative of the Green Party. He should know. He led a campaign to oust Severino Cavalcanti, then Speaker of the House, for taking kickbacks, became a national celebrity and won 300,000 votes in the 2006 elections, topping the field in his home state of Rio de Janeiro. Where there’s public will, there’s a way to beat corruption.
