Brazil’s Michel Temer, Paraguay’s Federico Franco and Hondura’s Roberto Micheletti were close allies to their presidents until they moved to take office — without winning elections.
By Sebastián Lacunza
Editor-in-Chief
Editor-in-Chief
If ousted, Brazilian president would ask Mercosur to suspend Brazil. What should Macri do?
Roberto Micheletti was already a veteran businessman and politician of the Honduran Liberal Party (PL) when he managed to become president on 28 June, 2009. As he had not even been able to win the primaries in the PL the year before, he took a shortcut to the presidency.
That Sunday of June, Congress removed President Manuel Zelaya (from the populist wing of the PL). The reason given by Congress, presided by Micheletti, was that the president intended to hold a non-binding referendum and eventually amend the constitution.
Micheletti’s coup was accompanied by the military troops raiding Zelaya’s residence during the small hours. After a stopover at a military base, the ousted president was deposited in Costa Rica still in his pijamas.
The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations rejected the de facto government. The six-month-old Barack Obama administration did the same, as it had changed the approach taken by George W. Bush toward the left-leaning and populist governments in Latin America.
Honduras entered a dark cycle of oppression and death. With Zelaya out of the picture, another president took office in 2010 and his government was recognized by the OAS and the White House.
Paraguay’s former bishop Fernando Lugo was the least populist among the leftist populist Latin American presidents when he was ousted another day of June, but in 2012. The previous week there had been a slaughter in Curuguaty (north-eastern Paraguay), leaving 17 murdered landless peasants and police officers. On June 21, the Lower House opened the impeachment process and days later Lugo was ousted with 39 senators voting in favour, four against and two absences. This is how the priest, also an elusive father, left office after breaking sixty years of Colorado Party dominance. The two hours given to Lugo to exercise his right to a defence failed to convince the judging chamber. As a result, then vice-president Federico Franco took office.
Like Micheletti, Franco was a notorious member of the (Authentic Radical) Liberal Party. Like Micheletti, he didn’t get enough votes even to become a presidential candidate.
Was it a coup? Although less unanimous than in the Honduras case, the international reaction against the Paraguayan unelected president was blunt. The Mercosur and Unasur blocs suspended its membership, but regional voices from the opposition began denouncing interference in Paraguay’s internal affairs. For Uruguay’s National and Colorado parties or Brazil’s PSDB, the institutions had worked as they should in the Mercosur partner. Three years on from Zelaya’s ousting, the scenario had changed.
Like Micheletti and Franco, Brazil’s Vice-President Michel Temer is not a man flattered by public support. His disapproval rating is high even among those who back the impeachment process against President Dilma Rousseff. To make things worse, the massive Lava Jato corruption case has Temer in the spotlight. Everybody points fingers at the vice-president, from owners of companies like Engevix and OAS, to a repentant senator, the anti-PT daily Folha de Sao Paulo reported yesterday.The millions of reais that can be found near Temer are so numerous that House Speaker Eduardo Cunha (the alleged greatest gangster of Brazilian politics) thinks that the vice-president took some bribes that should have gone to him.
The Micheletti, Franco and Temer trio also share having been partners of populist presidents and acting in the shadows of their rule. Pragmatic, anti-populist media outlets give them the opportunity to demonstrate their democratic credentials — only for a while.
Some point to legal differences among the impeachment processes in Honduras, Paraguay and Brazil. Are they a matter of form or of substance?
Old-fashioned military action was specific to the Central American country, while the Paraguayan Congress impeached Lugo in just 24 hours — an impressive record.
At the end of the day, what comes into play in Brazil meets the requirements of political majorities — as those who reject the idea of a “coup” hold. In that regard, the regional precedents are not so different. The express impeachment in Paraguay or the rough methods in Honduras are mere details in a legal decision taken by the lawmakers, respecting their constitutions.
The Brazilian Congress is currently not differentiating itself from its neighbours. Deputies and senators seem to be unable to discourage the idea that they are forging a pact of impunity. About half of the 594 members of Congress face charges of kickbacks, bribes, nepotism and murder — as well as using accounting tricks, the alleged crime committed by Rousseff. Consequently, a better rhetoric during the sickening spectacle last Sunday, when 367 deputies voted to impeach the Brazilian president, shouldn’t have been expected.
The bid for the narrative is part of the handbook of politics. The last Argentine dictatorship took the name of Process of National Reorganization and it was however much more like the Nazi regime than any of the recent examples of Tegucigalpa or Asunción.
In fact, nothing would be a “coup” if the comparison is with the Chilean Air Force bombing the Palacio de la Moneda in Santiago or the grupos de tareas launched by Massera and Videla for a massive hunting of dissidents.
If that is the benchmark, political science must provide new terms to define processes where traditional parties move to end governments that have been freely elected by the people. In a system that doesn’t exclude vote shopping, congressmen become privileged voters who watch our democracies, prevailing over the rest of the citizens.
Juan Gabriel Tokatlián, a professor at the Di Tella University, defined the cases of Honduras and Paraguay as “neo-coups”, “led by civilians” and with an “institutional appearance.” He included in the list the cases of Ecuador’s Jamil Mahuad (2000), Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez (2002), Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide (2004) and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa (2010).
Submitted to a savage opposition and her own shortcomings, Dilma Rousseff has anticipated she would ask the Mercosur bloc to suspend Brazil “if the democratic process is broken.”
This poses a dilemma for her Argentine colleague Mauricio Macri. The president’s affinity with Aécio Neves, the conservative candidate defeated by the Workers’ Party in 2014, is a matter of fact. The Rousseff administration faces similar allegations to those which hang over former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, such as the rampant corruption of their governments. But at the same time, the Argentine president rules without a majority in Congress. The Senate and the Lower House are composed, among others, of significant groups of Peronists and Radicals (UCR) who were Kirchnerites yesterday, are Macristas today and tomorrow...nobody knows.
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