WikiLeaks has unveiled a pair cables that appear to prove that Brasil’s new interim president was in close contact with U.S. embassy staff, providing wide-ranging analysis of Brazil’s political situation.
One cable, dated January 11, 2006, details a meeting between Michel Temer and U.S. embassy officials where he “met January 9 with CG and poloffs to discuss the current political situation.” It concerns the political vulnerability of the Workers Party (PT) and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president at the time, who was eventually succeeded by president Dilma Rousseff.
Brasil’s new president #Temer was an embassy informant for US intelligence, military https://t.co/3l2eUdiqvypic.twitter.com/IUuUgHYd1e
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 13, 2016
The cable counts the U.S. Southern Command in Miami among its recipients.
The Jan 2006 cable:
“Federal Deputy Michel Temer, national president of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), believes that public disillusion with President Lula and the Workers’ Party (PT) provides an opportunity for the PMDB to field its own candidate in the 2006 presidential election.”
“Temer criticized Lula’s narrow vision and his excessive focus on social safety net programs that don’t promote growth or economic development. The PT had campaigned on one program and, once in office, had done the opposite of what it promised, which Temer characterized as electoral fraud.”
The newer cable, dated June 21, 2006, provides an explanation on the part of Temer to the US diplomats of why Lula had strengthened in his position- defying his previous analysis.
Brasil’s #Dilma ousted in parliamentary coup; new pres is US embassy informant Michel Temer https://t.co/gpXqw7txF3 https://t.co/8ehpIYMC7K
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 12, 2016
“Temer dispassionately analyzed how Lula had seen his Chief of Staff and the entire leadership of his party disgraced, and prominent Congressional members of his party dragged through scandal, and had emerged personally more or less untouched. This was partly because other political parties — Temer mentioned the PSDB and the Liberal Front Party (PFL) but not his own PMDB, though his comment could just as easily apply to them — had, at different times, been involved in affairs akin to the PT’s infamous “mensalao” bribery scheme, and were thus not eager to expose the PT’s misdeeds to the fullest.”
“Michel Temer, President of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), believes President Lula has done a masterful job of disassociating himself from the political corruption scandals that have crushed some of his closest advisers. He also has effectively expanded social programs to earn the loyalty and support of Brazil’s lower-middle and lower classes.”
Temer also “confirmed that his own party will not run a candidate for president” (despite previously professing that it could to do so), but noted that the PMDB would elect 10 to 15 governors that year and thus “will again have the largest bloc in both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.”
“Whoever wins the presidential election will have to come to us to do anything,” said Temer. A useful position for the party of a U.S. “informant” to be in, perhaps.
Glenn Greenwald had previously reported for The Intercept that replacing Rouseff with Temer did absolutely nothing for the specter of Brazilian political corruption; it did however make a difference for the wealthiest of Brazilians.
“In this particular case, the person to be installed is awash in corruption: accused by informants of involvement in an illegal ethanol-purchasing scheme, he was just found guilty of, and fined for, election spending violations and faces an 8-year-ban on running for any office.”
“[O]nly 2% would support him for President and almost 60% want him impeached (the same number that favors Dilma’s impeachment). But he will faithfully serve the interests of Brazil’s richest: he’s planning to appoint Goldman, Sachs and IMF officials to run the economy and otherwise install a totally unrepresentative, neoliberal team (composed in part of the same party – PSDB – that has lost 4 straight elections to the PT).”
“In sum, PT has won four straight national elections – the last one occurring just 18 months ago. Its opponents have vigorously tried – and failed – to defeat them at the ballot box, largely due to PT’s support among Brazil’s poor and working classes. So if you’re a plutocrat with ownership of the nation’s largest and most influential media outlets, what do you do? You dispense with democracy altogether – after all, it keeps empowering candidates and policies you dislike – by exploiting your media outlets to incite unrest and then install a candidate who could never get elected on his own, yet will faithfully serve your political agenda and ideology.”
Now we know that it also makes a difference for certain foreign interests. The ouster of a democratically-elected head of state for the purpose of “democracy,” only to have him replaced with an at-least-equally corrupt official who happens to be more useful, has been a recurring theme of late.
Sources: WikiLeaks The Intercept
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