The underpants that destroyed a Cabinet

last updated 8 January 2015

Brazil

Jorge Marirrodriga

It’s always a bit awkward when a party official gets caught smuggling wads of cash, said Jorge Marirrodriga in Madrid’s El País. When the money is discovered in his neatly folded underpants during a baggage search, though, it’s downright embarrassing. An official with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Workers Party was caught that way earlier this month, with no plausible explanation why he had chosen to stash $185,000 among his unmentionables. The discovery lent credence to opposition allegations that Workers members had been bribing other legislators to side with the president. The growing corruption scandal threatened to engulf Lula himself, but he quickly “deflected blame.” Claiming that his underlings acted without his knowledge, the president purged his Cabinet, “sacrificing many longtime friends and collaborators” and appointing opposition party members in their places. So far, his tactic has worked. Less than one-third of Brazilians believe that Lula was in on the bribery scheme. But now he has to “maintain peace in a Cabinet with members from seven different parties,” some of them considerably far to the right. He may have saved his government—but at the expense of achieving his leftist goals.