Brazil's Speaker Negotiates Agreement with Government to Save Mandate

10/15/2015 - 09h07

The speaker of Brazil's lower house of Congress, Eduardo Cunha (PMDB-RJ), negotiated with the government to establish the terms of an agreement in order to, on one side, save the deputy's mandate, and, on the other, avoid the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff.

Cunha and presidential advisors had been rehearsing these negotiations in the last few days, but this Wednesday (14) they were formalized in the search for what is classified, inside government, as an "armistice" aiming to take some heat out of the political crisis.

The agreement was the subject of a lunch between Vice-President Michel Temer (PMDB-SP), Cunha and Senate President Renan Calheiros (PMDB-AL), and revolves around two basic points.

The first one is a guarantee by the government and the Workers' Party (PT) that a push for Cunha's disfranchisement will not succeed to the point of reaching the plenary of the House.

The request was made by the PSOL (Socialism and LIberty Party) and the Rede and will take off at the end of the month with the Ethics Committee of the lower house of Congress.

The second says that Brazil's speaker, on his end, would stop making decisions about impeachment requests against the PT, impeding the due process that would aim to remove the president from office.

Despite mutual distrust, both sides agree that, at this moment, they require this agreement in order to survive politically. In the words of a palace advisor, "today, Cunha's equity lies in not making any decisions" about impeachment.

Cunha is accused of integrating the Petrobras corruption scheme, with the suspicion that he received bribe money in secret personal and family accounts in Switzerland.

When questioned on Wednesday (14) over the negotiations with the government, Cunha said there is neither "war nor truce" with either of the two sides of the political dispute.

Translated by SUGHEY RAMIREZ

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	Pedro Ladeira/Folhapress
	Eduardo Cunha (PMDB-RJ), speaker of Brazil's lower house of Congress