Opinion: The Triumphal Return of the “300 Picaretas”

RIBEIRÃO PRETO, BRAZIL – (Opinion) Back in 1993, running for President after serving in Congress for four years, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva famously said that “300 picaretas” formed a majority of the 513 seats in Brazil’s lower house of Congress.

“Picareta” has dozens of synonyms in Portuguese; in English: “Reprobate”, “Scoundrel”, “Rapscallion”, Miscreant”, “Scalawag”, and Shakespeare’s “Varlet” all come to mind, describing a dishonest, unprincipled person.

Lula knew well whereof he spoke. Upon achieving the presidency in 2002, he focused on obtaining Congressional approval of his social programs. Recognizing the need for support from “picaretas”, he bought their votes with monthly allowance payments – the “Mensalão” scheme.

After the Brazilian Supreme Court unmasked the “Mensalão” and put some “picaretas” in jail for the first time in Brazilian history, a new approach to the 300 Picaretas was needed.

A two-pronged tactic was quickly found: (1) the plundering of Petrobras, Eletrobras and other state-owned businesses; coupled with (2) appointments to cushy positions in dozens of federal ministries and autarchies: political cronies found multiple opportunities to line their pockets with huge amounts of cash.

Eventually, the Lava-Jato task force of the Public Prosecutors Office unmasked that scheme as well, shining a searchlight onto the deep-rooted  corruption embedded in Brazilian politics.

Lava-Jato has had cascading effects upon the Brazilian presidency: the trial and conviction of ex-president Lula; the impeachment of his successor Dilma; the fecklessness of her lame duck successor Temer; and in 2018 the surprising election of Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro’s campaign platform had three principal planks: (1) root out the corruption of prior regimes; (2) restore “family values” to education and culture; and (3) replace “Marxist” economic policy with “liberal”.

Importantly, Bolsonaro pledged never to utilize, in securing these goals from Congress, the corrupt “old politics” of mutual backscratching, where it is always better to give AND to receive, both over and under the table.

Bolsonaro bet on support from cross-party blocs known as the “3-Bs”: Bullets, Bibles, and Beef, short for the law-and-order, evangelical, and agribusiness lobbies.

Bolsonaro lost his bet because not all the 3-Bs could fit on the same page with him. Not all evangelicals favor letting everyone own guns; farmers and ranchers love protection from competition; law-and-order adepts hate the militias often linked to the Bolsonaro clan.

Bolsonaro was blindsided by Covid-19, which left him clueless. Dithering, he abdicated all responsibility. While firing Health Ministers, criticizing masks, social distancing, and business lockdowns, he touted Trump’s pet medicine with no proven preventive or curative effects.

Bolsonaro’s economic agenda is now in tatters, as is his educational and cultural agenda; his lickspittle subservience to Trump offends nationalists in the military; worse yet, several past and present clan members are now suspects in corruption investigations.

Enter, stage center and stage right, the Centrão, a flexible bloc of over 200 members of Congress, who yearn for politics to return to the “good old days” when they ran the country.

The Centrão of 2020 is the reincarnation of the 300 Picaretas of the 1990s.

Centrão parties seek power and money- not necessarily in that order. They have no guiding philosophical principles; they do not care for ideologies, be they religious or secular; they mistrust the military, which thwarted their hegemony for almost three decades.

The Centrão’s modus operandi is to control the machinery of government, through legislation, regulation, and administration. The judiciary that, pre-Mensalão and Lava-Jato, had closed its eyes to their peccadilloes, now represents a threat to their hegemony.

Bolsonaro, having painted himself into a corner, needs the Centrão to rescue him and his government before the 2022 elections. In addition to reinstituting “old politics” patronage to forestall his impeachment, he is seeking additional protection for the 300 Picaretas, by trying to put the police, public prosecutors and the court system under his thumb.

That, however, is a subject for another column, possibly entitled, with an apology to the late poet e.e.cummings: “Lava Jato’s Defunct”.