Rumblings of a Constitutional Assembly in Brazil

[Judi Lynn]

by Matthew Taylor
April 19, 2017


Brazil remains in ferment. The massive Lava Jato investigation turned three years old last month, and this week marked the one-year anniversary of the Chamber of Deputies’ vote to impeach Dilma Rousseff. Last week brought the release of long-anticipated “end of the world” testimony by 77 plea-bargaining Odebrecht executives, which implicated nearly one hundred senior politicians, including a third of the Senate, more than three dozen deputies, thirty percent of the cabinet ministers, and a handful of governors. All six living presidents, including incumbent Michel Temer, now face allegations of improprieties from Lava Jato.

Temer’s signature reforms, meanwhile, have hit a rough patch. A draft pension reform amendment was watered down before presentation in committee in an effort to bring reluctant deputies on board. In time-honored fashion, the President is on an appointment spree, doling out mid-level government posts to allies to ensure that he surpasses the 308 votes needed to push the amendment through the lower house. Odds are that some diluted version of pension reform will pass, but only because of old-fashioned horse-trading, rather than deep commitment. Protests are ramping up, with angry members of police unions breaking windows at Congress earlier this week. And the timetable is short, with a committee vote now postponed until May, even as the race heats up in the 2018 campaign for the most wide-open presidential contest in living memory.

In the midst of the polarization and uncertainty, luminaries across the political spectrum have floated a bold new idea: a constitutional assembly to break the logjam. At least three problems could be addressed by rewriting the 1988 Constitution:

1. the rule of law problem, best exemplified by the fact that none of the sitting federal politicians implicated in the Odebrecht testimony are likely to receive a definitive sentence from the slow-moving high court before the end of the next presidential term in 2022;

More:
http://blogs.cfr.org/oneil/2017/04/19/rumblings-constitutional-assembly-brazil/