Serra Seeks `Life Jacket' in Brazil Tax Scandal to Stop Rousseff Landslide

[Judi Lynn]

Serra Seeks `Life Jacket' in Brazil Tax Scandal to Stop Rousseff Landslide
By Andre Soliani and Joshua Goodman - Sep 9, 2010 12:58 PM CT

Brazilian presidential candidate Jose Serra, trying to prevent a landslide defeat in next month’s election, is accusing his opponent’s party of using dirty tricks to gather private tax records of his supporters and family.

Serra, speaking to reporters in Sao Paulo yesterday, said the alleged breaking of bank secrecy laws by allies of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva resembled the “work of a gang.” He said the “crime” aimed to boost the candidacy of Lula’s hand- picked successor, Dilma Rousseff, and violated the constitution.

The former governor of Sao Paulo state stepped up attacks on Rousseff after the federal police began an investigation in July into whether tax officials leaked records of several people close to Serra, including his daughter Veronica and the vice president of his Social Democracy Party. The strategy is unlikely to erase Rousseff’s commanding lead, analysts said.

“The scandal is Serra’s life jacket to try to get to a second round,” said Andre Cesar, founder of Brasilia-based political risk firm CAC Consultoria. “But there is no evidence yet that the scandal has hurt Dilma’s campaign.”

More:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-09/serra-seeks-life-jacket-in-brazil-tax-scandal-to-stop-rousseff-landslide.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. Here's a fascinating point about "conservatism" in this article...

The bulk of Dilma’s voters are conservative, because they don’t want changes,” Barros said. “They are poor people who rose in life, who bought property and don’t want to lose what they gained during Lula’s government.”

Under Lula, Brazil created 14 million jobs, helping to raise 19 million people out of poverty from 2003 to 2008. Unemployment fell to a record low of 6.8 percent in December. As cabinet chief, Rousseff oversaw a program to build 1 million homes and was in charge of administering a 500 billion-real ($290 billion) infrastructure drive.

Rousseff, a former member of the Marxist underground that battled Brazil’s 1964-1985 dictatorship, has said that if elected she’ll continue Lula’s policies to spur development without sacrificing economic stability. Under Lula, the annual inflation rate has fallen from 17.24 percent in May 2003 to 4.49 percent in the 12 months through August. --from the OP

---------------------------------

I have long felt that the word "conservative" was wrong (if not psyops) for describing radical corpo-fascists like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, and their most direct ancestor, Ronald Reagan. Reagan's tax code rewrite to favor the rich, wild deficit spending on war profiteer projects, looting of the Savings & Loan institutions (robbing small savers and investors), illegal war on Nicaragua in direct violation of the Constitution (Congress had specifically forbidden it) and collusion on the huge slaughter in Guatemala and other horrors in Latin America, can hardly be described as "conservative" (cautious, lawful, MORAL, careful about other peoples' money).

And the Bush Junta went absolutely apeshit RADICAL on dismantling of the Constitution, the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, dismantling "New Deal" programs and the entire "New Deal" consensus, seventy years in the making, of spreading the wealth (through good wages and benefits, Social Security, etc.), the forty year consensus about unjust war (post-Vietnam), the consensus against torture, the consensus on Voting Rights, the consensus (seventy years in the making) on regulation of the banksters, the thirty year consensus on environmental protection, the fifty to one hundred year consensus on consumer and worker protection laws, the consensus on basic government ethics (not giving lucrative no-bid war contracts to the vice president's company), and much more, including our two hundred year consensus on the democratic requirement of access to education, minimal government secrecy, creation of "the commons" (schools, libraries, parks, roads, ports, postal service, means of communication--for everyone's use), and against private business monopolies (let alone MULTINATIONAL corporations with loyalty to NO ONE running the government and hijacking the U.S. military for a corporate resource war). And I haven't even mentioned the MULTI-TRILLION dollar deficit, made of tax cuts for the rich and unjust war.

"Conservative"? They ripped this country to pieces. How is that "conservative"?

WE LEFTISTS are the conservatives!

[naaman fletcher]

2. excellent post

I agree totally.