Brazil’s ‘Anti-Lula’ a Paragon of Political Incorrectness

BRASILIA, Brazil —  Nepotism is good. Homosexuality is bad. Getting pregnant through rape is a “horrible accident.”

Severino Cavalcanti, the author of these sentiments, is on a roll. When he was but a lowly back-bench congressman, such public pronouncements might have earned him a passing sneer in a political column. Now that he’s one of Brazil’s most powerful men, Cavalcanti’s controversial declarations have landed him on front pages across the country.

The politically incorrect lawmaker has commanded the spotlight since February, when he stunned just about everyone in Brazil with his election as president of the National Congress. His supporters in Congress rejoiced: He was one of their own, a man who might do them a few favors -- like giving them a pay raise, one of his chief promises when he campaigned for the leadership. But many in Brazil were mortified.

Depending on whom you talk to, Cavalcanti is either a champion of legislative independence or a career politician keen to advance the interests of career politicians. He’s a paragon of conservative moral virtue, shaped by his devout Catholicism, or a buffoonish symbol of the retrograde forces holding Brazil back.

Everyone, however, agrees on one thing: Just months into his new office, Cavalcanti has become a headache for the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Soon after his election, the 74-year-old legislator from Brazil’s depressed northeast forced the government to back down on a tax increase affecting mostly professionals and farmers. He demanded greater congressional control over the federal budget. He has threatened to challenge Lula’s constitutionally allowed executive decrees.

“Severino is a national leader now,” said Luciano Dias, a political consultant in Brasilia, the capital, who has worked with Cavalcanti’s Progressive Party. “He was an obscure deputy from a backwater state. Now he’s the man who’s the anti-Lula.”

As president of Congress, Cavalcanti wields power similar to that of the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, able to decide if or when legislation comes to a vote. Government-urged reforms of the central bank and trade unions are now at risk of being diluted, delayed or killed, analysts say -- setbacks that could complicate Lula’s bid for reelection next year.

Many here say Lula has only himself to blame. Normally, the leader of Congress is a member of the president’s party, but Lula chose as his candidate a left-wing deputy from his Workers’ Party, or PT, who lacked strong relationships with legislators.

Already feeling slighted by the government’s allegedly high-handed ways in handing out appointments and money, back-benchers revolted, electing Cavalcanti by a landslide in a humiliating defeat for the PT.

“The sin of the PT was arrogance, to think it was possible to impose a name on Congress,” Dias said.

As his colleagues’ standard-bearer, Cavalcanti has made increasing the authority of Congress and its power of patronage his battle cry. But blunders have mixed with victories. Public outrage forced him to abandon his effort to boost congressional salaries beyond $7,600 a month in a country where the monthly minimum wage is $120.

Observers say Cavalcanti also miscalculated when he demanded that Lula name a Progressive Party member to a ministerial post or face the faction’s withdrawal from the government’s coalition in Congress. Furious, Lula called his bluff. In the end, Cavalcanti backtracked and the Progressives remained in the coalition.

The aggressive tactics come as no surprise. “This is his style -- it always has been,” said Andre Zacharow, a deputy from the Socialist Party. “He’s no congressional neophyte.”

Cavalcanti joined Congress in 1995 after spending 28 years in the Assembly of his home state, Pernambuco. He gained a reputation for championing small-business owners and opposition to abortion.

He is a strong supporter of the traditional family -- none more so than his own, say critics, noting that several Cavalcantis are on his payroll or hold other government jobs.

When he succeeded last month in installing his son as a federal agriculture official in Pernambuco, Cavalcanti dismissed charges of nepotism, describing those who complain as “losers who don’t know how to raise their children.” Congress has since begun deliberating several anti-nepotism measures.

Critics call Cavalcanti the epitome of many of the things wrong in Brazilian politics, a system that revolves around self-enrichment and patronage.

“On the one hand, he shows a bad side of Brazilian reality, of clientelism, nepotism and attending to private, personal interests,” said Alberto Goldman, a deputy from the Social Democracy Party. But he said Cavalcanti was also “playing an important role in securing for Congress a level of independence, of autonomy, for which we’ve fought for years.”

Social activists are appalled at many of Cavalcanti’s conservative stands.

He has made derogatory comments about gays and lesbians; he reportedly once asked a gay activist in public about his sexual practices. This month, feminist groups were flabbergasted when Cavalcanti made his rape comment and advised impregnated victims to have their babies and raise them “with affection and love.”

“For us, rape is a crime and not an accident,” said Simone Diniz, founder of a women’s health organization. Cavalcanti “contributes to backwardness and intolerance, even over and against Brazilian law, which is already very conservative.”

Supporters acknowledge that Cavalcanti’s views and public statements can be awkward. But they back his vision of a more powerful Congress and a humbler government.

Cavalcanti, said Dias, has “created an environment of negotiation that’s very positive for ... deputies. Everyone can dream of holding power now.”