Brazil: Economy Minister Palocci finally unmasked. What´s next?
By Luís Afonso Assumpção | swimming against the red tide
23.03.06 | Despite all polls – that insist to give the first rank on 2006 elections run to Lula da Silva – his government is fading fast. His "premier" - in Brazil, after decades of high inflation we consider economy minister almost as our "premier" -, Antônio Palocci, the double-faced minister, is in his final days at Lula´s government. I posted here an article proving his liasons with drug-dealing-terrorist army from Colombia – FARC – some months ago. How can the higher position of the economy ministry of a country like Brazil could be filled by a person that´s a friend of terrorists? Alas, not just a friend, but the unofficial FARC´s representative in Brazil.
Now , new evidences on the character of Palocci arose: He is seriously involved in the corruption scandals that shocked the public opinion in Brazil. Palocci made part of a mob-group called "Ribeirao Preto´s Republic" - a bunch of former Palocci collaboratives when he was Ribeirao Preto´s Mayor – five years ago. These people has been accused to have received money from Cuba and bribed enterprise-owners to contribute to Workers Party election's forbidden funds.
This group used to secretly (not so secretly at all) meet each other on a rented mansion in Brasilia (Federal Capital) to plan new strikes and to share some of the results of their attacks – doing orgy parties with alcohol, high-class whores and viagra.
All seems to be in perfect order until now. Palocci bluffly denied all the accusations before a coward opposition bench that were so eager to "protect" the economic policy (that is the same from former Fernando Henrique Cardoso – unpayable high taxes that generate sub-minor development & employment indexes). But something went wrong. The mansion´s caretaker an eighteen-year-old and honest man called Francenildo Santos Costa decided to speak out how many times he saw Palocci at that house, always in company of girls and his comrades.
What happened after was one of the most significant signals of a totalitarian bias from Lula da Silva´s government: the minister and a senator from the Worker´s Party got the Supreme Court under their kneels, when they got a motion to prohibit Francelino to speak before a congressmen special comission. Yes, the government has the Supreme Court in its hands. But the wizardry worked only partially: Francenildo could speak for about 40 minutes but it was enough to prove Palocci was lying not once but everytime he went before the congress comission on the subject.
But the story went on: Some government troskyites inside the State Bank & Savings – where Francenildo has a bank account – broke his account secrecy, found some strange money in it - passed the story to a friendly weekly magazine called "Época" that published an article on the internet with the suspicion that Francenildo has received money (obviously from the opposition ) to throw false accusations against Palocci. It must be noted that "Época" magazine is owned by Globo TV network, that did not even mention a single word about Francenildo testimonial in its dominant TV news "Jornal Nacional".
But this second attempt exploded on the government hands: Francenildo prove that the he received money from his bilogical father that refuses to do a DNA test.
Francenildo´s life got overexposed by the media on a detailed level - unimaginable in a decent country. Do you imagine what is the reason for the Supreme Court's ban on Francenildo´s special commission speech? They say that it was to "protect Palocci´s private life" that could be destroyed by the revelations of his behavior inside that house – he is married. It´s unbelievable that the government in its hurry to protect Palocci did not give the slightest attention to civil rights and to protect the private life of Francenildo and his family.
But now it's the government that has to explain who obtained the illegal account balance sheet of Francenildo's account.
Two questions:
When the opposition will open the eyes and start to fight this government for good? And when Palocci will quit?
Only time will tell.
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