Brazilian anti-corruption outrage stirs

RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazilians tired of corruption are organizing street protests through online social networks, a movement likely to gain strength after a government minister resigned this week under a cloud of suspicion.

The non-partisan protest organizers are holding a new march Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro to highlight the scandals rocking the government of President Dilma Rousseff.

An initial protest held in Brasilia on September 7, Brazil's Independence Day, gathered 30,000 people, many of them wearing red clown noses.

Cristian Maza, one of the movement founders, told AFP that the web initiative calling for the protests "snowballed" after she and friends copied messages seen on Facebook and repeated them on their own digital walls.

Thirty thousand people have already signed on to say they will attend the Rio rally.

"Several demonstrations are being organized. We hope that will make things change," said Maza, a 37-year-old shopkeeper. "This won't be fixed with just one march. The cry has to continue."

The usual tolerance of Brazilians for corruption has been tested in recent months with revelations that have caused the departures from Rousseff's government.

Tourism minister Pedro Novais was forced to step down Wednesday after suspicions were raised that millions of dollars were embezzled. Reports also said he paid a personal assistant with public funds, and his wife used a parliamentary aide as her personal chauffeur.

Novais followed Rousseff's agriculture, transport and chief ministers out the door after scandals suggesting personal enrichment at taxpayers' expense.

The departures have badly weakened the image of Rousseff and her government.

Another minister, Nelson Jobim, in charge of defense, was forced to resign in August not because of corruption charges but because he openly criticized other cabinet members.

Some analysts, though, said the exits showed Rousseff was demanding higher standards from her ministers than those set under her predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

"The degree of tolerance by the president to these corruption claims is less than those shown by Lula and other presidents, who protected the fingered politicians," said Gil Castello Branco, secretary general of Contas Abertas, a group calling for government accountability and transparency.

Brazilian society, at the same time, is putting up with less, too, he said.

"On rare occasions, the Brazilian people mobilize, and that is what is happening now. We hope this cleaning up of politics continues," he said.

Political analyst Everaldo Moraes however said that an anti-corruption sweep had its limits, if only because the coalition government had to ensure it could keep ruling.

"Rousseff is looking to reassure public opinion, to show she won't accept corruption, but at the same time trying not to blow up its relationship with its allies," he said.

According to another group, Transparencia Brasil, Brazil's federated system means that a high number of public officials are in positions to pocket public money.

The Brazilian government has around 60,000 officials at that level, compared to 9,000 in the United States. It also has to watch over 27 states and 5,000 municipalities.

Rousseff, a 63-year-old former guerrilla who trained as an economist, took power in January this year at the head of a government made up of nine parties.

A recent study by the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a Brazilian university, estimated that corruption between 2002 and 2008 cost the country the equivalent of 23 billion dollars.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011