Brazil braces for latest political thriller

It reads like a racy political thriller. Lina Vieira, the recently fired head of Brazil’s revenue service, claims that while in office she was summoned to a secret meeting with Dilma Rousseff, the government’s senior minister, and asked to “speed up” an investigation into companies owned by the family of José Sarney, president of the Senate.

Ms Vieira says this was a request for a whitewash. Ms Rousseff – expected to run for president next year as the chosen successor to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – denies requesting any such thing and says the alleged meeting never took place. Ms Vieira is due to give evidence on the affair on Tuesday to a Senate committee. Were she to prove that the minister lied, some analysts say, Ms Rousseff’s political career would be over.

Whatever the outcome, the affair can only add to the paralysis in Brazil’s Senate, where legislators spend more time swapping accusations and insults than legislating, says Luciano Dias, a political consultant in Brasília. It also contributes to an “end-of-term” mood in Brasília more than a year from next October’s election and may encourage more mudslinging. And it has come as the election itself, until recently expected to be a two-horse race, may be thrown open.

Ms Vieira was dismissed in July. No reason was given. Then, many commentators surmised that she had upset Ms Rousseff by questioning accounting practices at Petrobras – the government-controlled but publicly traded oil group that, largely as a result of Ms Vieira’s investigation, is now the subject of a Senate inquiry.

The opposition has jumped on the Vieira affair partly because it could stoke the dying flames of a scandal surrounding Mr Sarney. He is accused of using hundreds of “secret acts” – laws that were passed but not published by the Senate – to benefit family and friends. He denies any wrongdoing but the opposition, infuriated by apparent contradictions in his defence, lodged 11 complaints against him at the Senate ethics committee, each of which could have cost him his job.

But Mr Sarney’s backers in the Senate, known as the “shock troop”, produced similar evidence against an opposition leader. After fireworks on the Senate floor, tempers calmed and the ethics committee took no action.

The small proportion of Brazilians who read the broadsheet press have watched these antics aghast. But they appear to have had little impact on Mr Lula da Silva’s popularity, even though he has backed Mr Sarney throughout.

But Mr Dias says the Sarney scandal is not over yet. Fresh evidence could rekindle it at any time. And he says Ms Veira’s accusations may encourage other officials who have been on the wrong end of Ms Rousseff’s sometimes abrasive manner to speak out.

Meanwhile, Marina Silva, Mr Lula da Silva’s former campaigning environment minister, said last week that she was considering leaving the president’s leftwing PT, which she helped found, to join the Green Party and possibly run as its candidate for president next year. Ciro Gomes, former minister and a temperamental Lula supporter from the president’s heartland in the poor northeast, says her candidacy would “implode” Ms Rousseff’s, by splitting the pro-government vote. Yet perhaps inspired by Ms Silva, Mr Gomes appears poised to join the race himself.

Many analysts believe Mr Lula da Silva has supported Mr Sarney, his former adversary, because only he could deliver the backing to make Ms Rousseff’s presidential campaign a success. Yet the run-up to the election – already, apparently, under way, even earlier than is common in Brazil – has suddenly become more complicated.