Pandora’s Box: to resign or not to resign

The deputies in the Federal District Legislative Assembly (CLDF) are hard at work to avoid federal intervention and save their own skins. That means moving impreachment motions against the governor and a few colleagues along in a timely fashion. With the machinery set in motion, deadlines begin to loom on the horizon.

Forfeiture of office (“cassação”) automatically carries another penalty in Brazil: a set period of ineligibility for holding elective office. But there is a way to avoid both the forfeiture of office and the penalty: resign.

So far two of the deputies being impeached have resigned: Leonardo “socks” Prudente and Junior Brunelli (who sang the hymn to bribery money). The other deputy, Eurides Brito, who plopped her money into a shopping bag, says she will fight. That means we may get treated to an impeachment trial after all. And it also means, in all probablity,  that Prudente and Brunelli will soon be running for office again.

There are five other deputies whose names popped up in incriminating conversations in the videotapes provided by the whistleblower, Durval Barbosa. But deputy Erika Kokay (PT), the acting chairperson of the Ethics Committee, says the impeachment motions against them have been suspended as they were only named by third parties and personal involvement in wrongdoing cannot be proved.