From Protest to Parliamentary Coup: An Overview of Brazil s Recent History

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies Travesia ISSN: 1356-9325 (Print) 1469-9575 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjla20 From Protest to Parliamentary Coup: An Overview of Brazil s Recent History Fabiano Santos & Fernando Guarnieri To cite this article: Fabiano Santos & Fernando Guarnieri (2016) From Protest to Parliamentary Coup: An Overview of Brazil s Recent History, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 25:4, 485-494, DOI: 10.1080/13569325.2016.1230940 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2016.1230940 Published online: 04 Oct 2016. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 338 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalinformation?journalcode=cjla20 Download by: [189.62.220.207] Date: 17 January 2017, At: 12:52

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2016 Vol. 25, No. 4, 485 494, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2016.1230940 Fabiano Santos and Fernando Guarnieri FROM PROTEST TO PARLIAMENTARY COUP: AN OVERVIEW OF BRAZIL S RECENT HISTORY Brazil s parliamentary coup has managed to topple the elected PT government with remarkable ease, meeting with little resistance at home or abroad despite the blatant violation of constitutional norms and the almost farcically corrupt record of the new incumbents. How has the neo-right been able to transfer its script of juridical-mediatic manipulation of electoral democracy, previously rehearsed on smaller stages such as Honduras and Paraguay, to the regional hegemon? What are the stakes and perspectives for Brazil s political institutions, and are there any possibilities left for emancipatory movements? Two leading political scientists from Rio de Janeiro chronicle the events so far. Antecedents The current political process in Brazil, characterized by the parliamentary coup against President Dilma Rousseff, cannot be understood without taking into consideration the uprisings and protests that started in the second half of her first term in office (2011-2014), the so-called June 2013 protests. In March of that year the approval ratings for Rousseff and her government were still extremely high. The drop in popularity in the course of this period, however, was precipitous: from 60% the approval ratings went down to 50% in one month (from March to April), only to plummet to around 27% in June. No doubt the disappointing growth of the country s GDP the previous year as well as increasing levels of inflation go some way to explaining why Brazilians were angry with their government, but they are nowhere near sufficient if we want to grasp the complexity of the social and political situation at that juncture. In that respect, the protests and uprisings are much more revealing, and seen in that light, they help us understand how the institutional degradation that we have seen in recent times became possible. The June 2013 protests will forever mark the civic conscience and political socialization of the Brazilian people. The protesters took to the streets, initially just in São Paulo, in order to demonstrate against the increase in public bus fares. The inability of the local authorities to deal with the matter, especially by underestimating Ó 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

486 LATIN AMERICAN CULTURAL STUDIES the potential for conflict inherent in the proposed fare hike, in addition to the violence with which students and journalists who covered the first protests were treated by the police, turned something that had all the hallmarks of an ephemeral news item into a political phenomenon of great proportions. The order of events that followed has been discussed at great length: students and activists, using that new technology for mobilizing people into collective action known as social media, urged their followers to protest, not only against the fare hike, but also against the brutality used by São Paulo s apparatus of repression, while at the same time intimating that other banners might be flown at the protests. The followers who received the message passed it on to their friends, who in turn added new grievances and reasons to revolt and express a refusal to conform. The national press was stunned and initially denounced this development as the work of the same young revolutionaries as always, their numbers swelled by hordes of rebels without a cause. But before long, they changed their tune and began covering the protests, describing them as a civic and well-nigh obligatory rite of passage. It came as no surprise that corruption was added to the grievances of the protesters. It was bound to come up at some point, especially since the country was hosting the Confederations Cup, an event organized by FIFA, which at the time was being investigated for charges of bribery, involving hitherto respectable Brazilian public figures. The coalition of the people that was formed, spontaneously as it were, in the streets, ended up being of a highly unusual composition. It brought together militants of the MPL (Movimento pelo Passe Livre Free Fare Movement); young and not-so-young left-wing radicals, affiliated to political parties like the PSOL (Partido Socialism e Liberdade Socialism and Liberty Party) and the PSTU (Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores Unificado United Socialist Workers Party); activists for a whole range of causes (indigenous rights, LGBT, Afro-Brazilians, and so forth); segments from the upper, the upper middle, and the new middle classes, who, in turn, see themselves deprived of a consistent political alternative on the right of the political spectrum; anarchists and activists linked to international protest movements; as well as neo-nazis and confirmed fascists, staunch believers in violence and intolerance as a legitimate means of protest and an expression of what they stand for. In the absence of a concrete demand, like the Diretas Já (Direct Elections Now) movement at the time, or the call for the impeachment of former president Fernando Collor, these people found themselves brought together by the same emotion: to participate, to protest, to express themselves, violently if needs be, to shout slogans, to carry placards, to wear masks, in short, to experience the euphoria of being part of a mass movement of unparalleled proportions. The strategy of the first campaigners, a group consisting of members of the MPL, radical left-wing parties and professional activists linked to international protest movements, ended up being extremely successful. The timing was perfect, too, with the Confederations Cup guaranteeing ample media coverage, both national and international, of the events. It was also a stroke of political genius to link, almost as if it were a kind of trade-off, the costs of renovating stadiums and building the minimum infrastructure necessary to make the Cup viable to the perennial problem of good quality public services in crucial areas like education

FROM PROTEST TO PARLIAMENTARY COUP 487 and healthcare. By mixing in the topic of graft and corruption, as a kind of backdrop, the package was completed. It was simple, direct and efficient. But if the inclusion of the issue of corruption did not really come as a surprise, the attempts by fascists to arrogate the street protests was shocking, and not just for those who were merely watching from the side-lines. A large portion of the protesters, mainly those who were linked to political parties, generally of the Left, suffered a serious setback when they saw themselves marching alongside placards saying things like Dictatorship Now, You Don t Represent Me and the like. On Thursday 20 June, militants from various political parties and trade unions tried to join the protests only to have their banners and placards destroyed as well as being physically assaulted. Note that by that time the governments of various states and prefectures, including São Paulo, where it all began, had already decided to reverse the decision to increase the public bus fare. Needless to say that by that point the movement had gone well beyond the original aims of the protesters. When the core of those first activists saw what was going on, they realized it would be a question of disputing the meaning of the street protests. The objective for the participants in the demonstrations now became to prevent the fascists from dominating the scene and the political Right from capitalizing on the diffuse feelings of dissatisfaction and the desire for nonconformity, and from harnessing the new societal mood energizing the country. But it was too late; the damage had been done. The fascist logic, which beforehand was confined to certain segments of the elite who read Carioca or Paulista newspapers, has since been openly and unashamedly expressed and has entered common parlance. The Brazilian fascist logic is very simplistic, very basic: in Brazil the educational and healthcare systems are suffering because the government has spent too much money on stadiums for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. According to this argument, Brazil s problem is political, or to be more precise, the problem is politics and politicians. The idea being that in Brazil the elected leaders, the political parties and their candidates, and the people in government, representing the Executive Branch on the level of the municipality, the state and the nation, are corrupt, every single one of them. And it goes without saying that the situation is infinitely worse in the National Congress, the legislative Assemblies and the municipal councils. These people are nothing less than a gang of organized criminals whose sole aim is to empty the public coffers. The formal institutions of control, above all the Judicial Branch and Prosecutor s Office, as well as the Army until not so long ago, are composed of good men who are well prepared for their jobs, but who have to be given more powers, as it is their task to fight against the unremitting criminal onslaught on the public finances and the goodwill of the common people. In Brazil, the classic mechanism used in a democracy to keep public figures in check (read: elections) is in fact a key factor in the institutional decadence and degradation. Given that the overwhelming majority of the population is poor and ignorant, they benefit from the income and services provided by the government and the public sector, which is corrupt in its very essence, and so, ultimately, the voter is nothing but a collaborative cog in the wheels of an iniquitous system. In other words, according to the fascist logic, it is the popular vote that is at the root of our political problems.

488 LATIN AMERICAN CULTURAL STUDIES The trial The parliamentary coup of which President Dilma Rousseff is a victim and which is still ongoing, pending the final decision of the Senate, is a major challenge for anyone studying Brazil s political institutions, especially the system of presidential coalition. It is no trivial task to understand how a government led by a president, who until 2012 enjoyed very high popular approval ratings, was plunged into a political crisis with such a traumatic outcome for the young Brazilian democracy. Even after her re-election in 2014 Dilma Rousseff could boast very reasonable approval ratings and her policies were well received by the public. A part of the explanation, as we indicated above, resides no doubt in the adverse economic conditions of 2014 and 2015. But it is important, not to say crucial, to reflect carefully on what happened in the Brazilian economy in the years from 2011 to 2014, which explains the fundamental reasons why it didn t grow as fast as the business community, the trade unions and the consulting agencies had expected. At the start of her first term in office, Dilma Rousseff introduced important changes, considered vital by a significant number of the nation s captains of industry, with the aim to allow the country to grow in a manner consistent with its potential, estimated to be around 4.5 to 5% per year. After encouraging a small devaluation of the Brazilian Real, the Central Bank started a series of reductions of the base interest rate. In addition, the energy costs were brought down significantly and the Ministry of Finance adopted a policy of tax exemption for key industries. In other words, the government took a number of short-term measures demanded by the business community in order to allow the industries to assume their central role in the country s economic development once more. As is well known, the effects of these measures would turn out to be a far cry from the proposed objectives. In a way, it is possible to maintain that the productive sector acted in an opportunistic manner, that is to say, it enjoyed the extra cash generated by the lower interest rates and reduced production costs, thanks to the tax exemptions and lower energy prices, and yet it did not deliver what the government and the people had expected: it did not invest. The business community s response put the ball in the court of the National Congress, since they blamed the low return on the investment made by macro economic policies on factors like the still high levels of bureaucracy, the inefficiency of the country s infrastructure, and the low educational levels of the workers. At this point it is worth asking the question: has the government of the Workers Party during Dilma Rousseff s first term in office really remained inert at the micro level, that is to say, in terms of legal incentives for investment and production? It is possible to show that, as far as the issuing of laws was concerned, the government did not remain inert when faced with the challenges of leveraging and improving growth rates. However, due to her having to form a cohesive coalition around and in support of her agenda, it is equally possible to prove that Dilma s presidency, especially from late 2012 onwards, suffered from a marked process of abrasion and erosion. This erosion was eventually reflected in: a) the difficulty of getting re-elected (obtaining only 52% of the votes, as against 48% going to the opposition candidate Aécio Neves); b) the desertion of her historical political partner, the PSB (Partido Socialista Brasileiro Brazilian Socialist Party), and the

FROM PROTEST TO PARLIAMENTARY COUP 489 distancing of the other left-wing allies, such as the PDT (Partido Democrático Trabalhista Democratic Labour Party); and c), crucially, the dramatic reduction of left-wing and centre-left seats in the upper and lower houses in 2014. The political landscape in 2015, after her inauguration, only made the economic crisis worse, forcing the government to confront a serious political crisis, in the midst of which the opposition and the leadership of the Judicial Branch didn t hesitate to act in a way that was designed to hobble the presidency. Not paying attention to the institutional elements at stake, at the end of 2014 Dilma Rousseff formed her cabinet, especially the inner political core of her administration, following the same methodology she adopted at the start of her first term in office by offering minority groups within the PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores Workers Party) the monopoly of the ministries that are responsible for articulating policy, coordinating government, Justice and the dialogue with organized society. At the start of her second term in office, the president s party, exploiting the number of seats they occupy in the Chamber of Deputies, once again decided to put forward their own candidate as president of the Chamber, to run against Eduardo Cunha, the deputy for Rio de Janeiro and the candidate of the PMDB (Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro Brazilian Democratic Movement Party). And so, in 2014 and 2015, Dilma Rousseff, by her own choice or as a consequence of actions taken by the parties that made up her power base, saw the core elements of the PT and the PMDB dislodged from the inner circles of government and at loggerheads with each other. The increased instability of Congress eventually convinced the head of the Executive Branch to reorganize the political alliance by inviting vice president Michel Temer (of the PMDB) to be in charge of this re-articulation. When this move did not get the desired result (Temer withdrew his participation a few months after he took charge), Dilma reshuffled her cabinet, re-allocating key portfolios to benefit not only the PMDB, but also the hegemonic sectors within the PT under the leadership of ex-president Lula. Immediately after that, the process towards the impeachment started when the PT faction of federal deputies refused once more to assent to Eduardo Cunha s request to vote in his favour in the Chamber of Deputies Ethics Committee. 1 Even so, the changes introduced by Dilma at the end of that year seemed to have had an effect, until in March of the following year a series of strange coincidences led to a re-alignment of the majority of the Lower Chamber behind Michel Temer, and to the proposal for Dilma s removal gaining traction. It is not an easy task to understand what has happened in Brazilian politics in the last three years. The facts related so far, however, suggest two possibly complimentary lines of interpretation. The first starts by acknowledging the strength and resilience of the Brazilian way of governance, based on the influence exercised by the majority parties in the Legislative Branch, which gets stronger with each election and each presidential administration, not only in staffing the ministries, but also on setting the government s agenda. The second line of interpretation adds to the management of political majorities in the National Congress the difficulty of incorporating people on lower incomes into the world of formal politics through parties that are the most identified with their interests and expectations, the so-called workers parties, be they from the left or centre-left.

490 LATIN AMERICAN CULTURAL STUDIES Impeachment and interim government Like in the sixteenth-century commedia dell arte, the process that may lead to president Dilma s impeachment is a play without an author, a kind of improvised theatre. Various people take turns as the protagonist of this farce that at the end is revealed to the audience to be a parliamentary coup. In order to understand the plot and its characters we have to start by taking a closer look at the relation Dilma had with Congress. In Brazil, the president of the Republic has strong institutional prerogatives, amongst others the ability to present bills to Congress. The Brazilian model of governance guarantees the president a high legislative success rate. On average, in the twenty-year period starting with Fernando Henrique Cardoso s first administration until the end of Dilma s first term in office, more than 70% of the bills presented by the Executive Branch to the Chamber of Deputies were passed. 2 Although the presidents legislative success rate inevitably suffers in the last year of their mandate, dropping on average to around 60%, Dilma, in the last year of her first mandate in 2014, only saw 16% of her proposed bills passed, in spite of being able to count on a coalition government based on a majority, which controlled around 60% of the seats in the Chamber. Something fishy was going on. It should be stressed that the drop in Dilma s legislative success rate cannot be explained by the lack of support for her government. After coming down from the Olympic heights of 60% (an approval rating only exceeded by Lula) to a little under 30% in June 2013, throughout the year 2014 the percentage of people who considered Dilma s government to be good to very good remained stable at around 40%. 3 By way of comparison, the best ratings ever gained by FHC (Fernando Henrique Cardoso), who had a very high legislative success rate throughout his time in office, was 47%. 4 If we take an even closer look we see that the greatest drop in Dilma s legislative success rate concerns provisory measures and fiscal bills. These two types of bills are normally passed without great difficulty by the Chamber, because they are laws that guarantee the smooth functioning of the administration and the management of the economy, which are matters the Chamber usually delegates to the Executive Branch. Analysing the matter at hand, it becomes clear that the rejections were not motivated by a desire to obstruct the government s agenda because it ran counter to the wishes of the majority of the MPs. They even rejected proposals such as a fiscal supplement to the Bolsa Família programme and a new draft of the Brazilian Highway Code. Let us not forget that the Chamber, which in 2014 rejected almost half of the provisory measures, approved 80% of the very same measures in the three previous years of Dilma s mandate. It was therefore neither her low approval ratings, nor some programmatic shift that led to her conflict with the Chamber. Everything indicates that the parliamentary leadership was out to hamstring the government. One figure stands out among these leaders: Eduardo Cunha. In March 2014 Cunha appeared on the front cover of the weekly magazine Isto É, which had a picture of him with the caption The Republic s Saboteur. According to the report, the then leader of the PMDB in the Chamber routinely acts in a way so as to damage the coalition with the PT, obstruct Dilma Rousseff s government and, who knows, to render her re-election

FROM PROTEST TO PARLIAMENTARY COUP 491 impossible [ ] To cease his acts of sabotage, Cunha demands a high price: more responsibilities, more power and more funding. In addition to the allies he was able to win over with these responsibilities and funds, Cunha could count on the support of the most conservative faction of the evangelical MPs. That is how characters appeared on the scene such as pastor Marcos Feliciano, who, in spite of (or owing to) his homophobic stance, became the president of the Chamber s Commission for Human Rights and Minorities. It was with the help of this cast of supporting actors that Cunha secured his nomination as the speaker of the Chamber, and it was with this group that he adopted a new strategy in an attempt to obstruct the government: in addition to blocking bills, he would attack the most progressive aspects of the 1988 Constitution. In 2015 and 2016 the Chamber discussed proposals that included lowering the age of criminal responsibility, the revocation of the Disarmament Statute, new rules regulating the demarcation of indigenous territories, and the creation of a national Heterosexual Pride Day. What before had been blackmail, pure and simple, now took on an ideological character. Where before the government was defeated on a number of issues, regardless of their ideological content, now Cunha and his cronies were out to torpedo the more left-wing aspects of the government s agenda. As indicated above, the conflict between Dilma and Cunha reached its apex when the PT refused to vote in support of the speaker of the Chamber when he was questioned by the ethics committee, who were contemplating stripping him of his seat after he had been accused of having a number of secret Swiss bank accounts, in all likelihood to deposit money he had received in bribes. At that moment Cunha, independently of his party, the PMDB, and indirectly assuming the leadership of his own parliamentary faction, announced his break with the government and prepared his masterstroke, his ippon, by accepting the request for the impeachment of the president. But the truth is that the accusations of corruption made it impossible for Cunha to continue in his role as protagonist, and it was at that moment that the main opposition party, the PSDB, managed to steal the show. The members of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (knows as Toucans) never really accepted their defeat in 2014. They asked for a recount of the votes, denounced supposed irregularities in the polling stations, filed a lawsuit against the PT with the TSE (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral Supreme Electoral Court) for financial irregularities during the campaign, and their candidate declared that he had not been defeated by a political party but by a criminal organization. The Toucans, in spite of the hesitation of some of its members, cosied up to the right-wing movements that were organizing marches demanding Dilma s impeachment, and adopted a more and more conservative agenda let us not forget that that the bill known in the Chamber as Cura Gay (Gay Cure) was proposed by an MP of the PSDB. Since their fourth electoral defeat the PSDB saw in Dilma s removal their best chance of retaking the presidency. In order to achieve this, they contracted, in May 2015, two professors of the Faculty of Law from the USP (University of São Paulo), Miguel Reale Júnior and Janaína Paschoal, to draw up a legal opinion, a document on which the demand for impeachment was later founded. This point needs to be stressed. The idea of impeachment preceded the existence of the purported crime. The opposition parties, led by the

492 LATIN AMERICAN CULTURAL STUDIES PSDB, decided on a strategy to topple the president by means of an impeachment and then proceeded to come up with a crime. Miguel Reale Júnior himself, in an article published in the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo in March 2015, said that there was no legal basis for an impeachment. But urged by the opposition parties, he finally found a legal ground for impeachment in the legal opinions of the TCU (Tribunal de Contas da União Federal Court of Auditors). The PSDB didn t enter the main stage in a decisive, firm manner. Initially, the party wavered and there were protests by some of the party s figureheads, like ex-president Fernando Henrique and Geraldo Alckmin, the governor of São Paulo. What made the party assume a leading role were the pro-impeachment street protests. These movements, led by supra or nonpartisan entities like the MBL (Movimento Brasil Livre Free Brazil Movement) and Vem pra Rua (Come to the Street) mobilized the Toucans core vote: the upper and upper middle classes. The PSDB, afraid of losing its electoral base, felt compelled to close ranks with regards to the impeachment. The pro-impeachment street movement was but a supporting act in this play. It gave the cue to the rest of the cast. By taking to the streets, it provided an appearance of legitimacy to the actions of the other characters, who could claim they acted in name of the people. Most protesters were men (57%), predominantly white (77%), with an average age of 45 (40% under 50), highly educated (77%) and on high incomes. 5 In addition, 70% of those who took part in the last big demonstration in favour of impeachment, in March 2016, had already participated in other demonstrations against the government, against the Workers Party, against Lula, and in support of their great idol, the federal judge Sérgio Moro. These protesters were spurred on by the big media, who are openly partial in the conflict 6 and who made use of leaked information about the legal proceedings of Operation Car Wash, selecting from the depositions and extracts of confessions those that incriminated the PT, creating the fiction that this party was the great, indeed, the only party responsible for creating and maintaining a corrupt system, and that the removal of the president, who was not implicated in any of the denunciations, would bring an end to the corruption. This narrative of the media played into the hands of the interests of the Judicial Branch, for whom, as anticipated as early as in 2004 by Moro himself, the arrests, the confessions and the publicity given to the information thus garnered generate a virtuous circle in the sense that is guarantees the support of the public opinion for legal action, impeding the public figures under investigation from obstructing the work of the magistrates. 7 This narrative also played into the hands of those who consider themselves cut off from the centre of power and who saw the demonization of their adversary as the only means to get back into power. By agreeing to the demand for the impeachment of president Dilma, Cunha accepted that the plot would take a new twist. The blackmail and manipulations were left behind, and political articulation and calculations took centre stage. Vice president Michel Temer was chosen to play the main character in this new act of the play, the general mood of which was now turning in the direction of the tragedy. Temer forged a new base of parliamentary support and managed to have the bill demanding the president s impeachment passed. This is where our Brazilian model of governance shows its resilience. With the removal of Dilma, Temer took up the role of interim

FROM PROTEST TO PARLIAMENTARY COUP 493 president and called upon representatives of seven parties to form a new government. As the interim president himself declared: I played a double game. First I spoke with the society at large when we cut the number of ministries. That was a dialogue with the people. But afterwards, I had to make political alliances. That was inevitable. Because that s what it s like in a democracy. It is only in autocratic regimes, in dictatorships, that you don t honour the Legislative Branch and the Judicial Branch. But in a democratic system, you have to live with both the Legislative and the Judicial Branches (Fantástico, TV Globo, 15 May 2016). This new coalition, which included the PSDB, the DEM (Democratas Democrats) and the PPS (Partido Popular Socialista Popular Socialist Party), the three main opposition parties when Lula and Dilma were in power, changed the government s agenda radically, despite its interim nature. An example of this change is the axing of the Ministry of Agrarian Reform and Development, the Ministries for Women, Racial Equality, Youth, and Human Rights and the Ministry for Science and Technology. Even more symbolic of Temer s lurch to the Right is the absence of women and Afro-Brazilians in his cabinet. As if the political opportunism of the opposition and the adoption by the interim government of a political agenda that would have been defeated in a popular vote weren t enough, a number of the new ministers have been accused of malfeasance, forcing three of them to resign after less than a month in office. This picture has led to a growing popular discontent. If an expressive contingent of the people were already demonstrating in the streets against the impeachment, many more are now protesting on a daily basis against the acts by the interim government, both in Brazil and abroad. According to a poll by IPSOS, in June the interim government had an approval rating of a mere 11%. 8 No one knows how the play will end and the improvisations continue. It is unclear whether the Senate will vote in favour of the impeachment, and Dilma has not left the stage yet. Since she was removed from power, the number of people who say they trust her has gone up from 8% in April to 20% in June. 9 The PSDB seems to be closer and closer to abandoning the interim government. In addition, the idea of a plebiscite allowing the people to decide whether there should be new elections is gaining force. In guise of a conclusion, it would not be unfounded to affirm that the Brazilian model of governance is able to withstand even elements as disruptive as Eduardo Cunha. It is equally worth pointing out that there have been significant changes to the political behaviour of the Brazilian population, which appears no longer willing to see history pass them by as if the were brute beasts. What is not known is whether the resulting vector of this new stage in the development, which will probably not reveal itself until after the general elections of 2018, will incline towards an explicit form of anti-establishment and anti-politics stance, perhaps encouraged by the candidature of some hero (or thug) from the Judicial Branch, or whether it will re-emerge as a reformed party system, in tune with the traditions and renovated social movements that are fighting to further democracy and social justice. For now, all we know is that there is little cause for optimism. Having said that, history is in constant flux and at the rate the events in Brazil are unfolding, 2018 is still a very long way off. Translated by Sander Berg

494 LATIN AMERICAN CULTURAL STUDIES Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. Notes 1. In November 2015, Eduardo Cunha was questioned by the ethics committee of the Chamber of Deputies for having undeclared Swiss bank accounts, having denied this previously during the hearings of the Parliamentary Inquest into corruption in the state-run oil company Petrobras. 2. We extrapolated this percentage after studying the legislative data given to us by the CEBRAP. 3. Source: Datafolha, Evaluation of Dilma Rousseff s government (PO813859). 4. Source: Datafolha, Evaluation of the FHC s government (available on http://me dia.folha.uol.com.br/datafolha/2013/05/02/aval_pres_15122002.pdf, last accessed 28/06/2016). 5. 38% of the demonstrators had an income of more than 10 times the minimum wage, a percentage that far exceeds the 8% of the population of São Paulo. The data come from Datafolha Profile and Opinion of the Protest of 13 March in the Avenida Paulista from March 2016. 6. See, for example, the editorial Nem Dilma nem Temer (Neither Dilma Nor Temer) from 2 April 2016 in the Folha de São Paulo, which states that the president had lost the conditions under which to govern the country and therefore had to step down. 7. Moro, Sérgio, Considerações sobre a operação Mani Pulite (Considerations on the operation Mani Pulite) R. CEJ, Brasília, n. 26, p. 56-62, July-September 2004. 8. Opinion poll by IPSOS Pulso Brasil Indicadores Políticos (Brazilian Poll Political Indicators), June 2016. 9. Idem. Fabiano Santos hold a Ph.D. in political science (IUPERJ). He is professor of political science at the Institute of Social and Political Studies of Rio de Janeiro State University (IESP/UERJ) and has been president of the Brazilian Association of Political Scientists (ABCP) between 2008 and 2012. He is a co-editor of the Journal of Politics in Latin America and the author, together with Acir Almeida, of Fundamentos Informacionais do Presidencialismo de Coalizão (Curitiba: Appris, 2011), as well as many articles published in Brazil and abroad, focusing particularly on Brazilian political institutions. Email: fsantos@iesp.uerj.br Fernando Guarnieri holds a Ph.D. in political science(usp).heisassociateprofessor of political science at Rio de Janeiro State University (IESP/UERJ) and a visiting professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. A specialist in political institutions and the party system in Brazil, he has published widely in newspapers and journals in Brazil and overseas, including Electoral Studies, Brazilian Political Science Review, and Opinião Pública.