MAGALHAES WIRETAPPING CASE GOES TO SENATE FLOOR

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 BRASILIA 001356 SIPDIS SENSITIVE DEPT FOR WHA/BSC E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PREL BR SUBJECT: MAGALHAES WIRETAPPING CASE GOES TO SENATE FLOOR REF: A. BRASILIA 0566 ¶B. BRASILIA 0825 ¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY. On April 30, the leadership of the Brazilian Senate refused to order the opening of expulsion proceedings against Senator Antonio Carlos Magalhaes (PFL) for allegedly ordering hundreds of illegal phone taps against his political opponents in his home state of Bahia. The decision by the leadership, led by Magalhaes' ally Jose Sarney, was not unexpected and kicks the case back to the Senate floor. Magalhaes' legal and ethics problems are far from over, and with political winds buffeting each step of the way, it is too early to say whether the Senator will suffer punishment or "have a pizza" and skate away unscathed. In any case, Magalhaes' popularity is unshaken in Bahia. END SUMMARY. ¶2. (SBU) The ethics case of Senator Antonio Carlos Magalhaes ("ACM"),the powerful political boss from Bahia, ground forward this week as the seven-member Senate leadership board, led by Senate President and longtime ACM ally Jose Sarney (PMDB-Amapa),refused to order the opening of expulsion proceedings in the Senate's Ethics Committee. This decision is part of the torturous path that the case has followed since exploding in the national press in January. The case began in late 2001, a few months after Magalhaes resigned from the Senate for an unrelated earlier ethics violation. He then allegedly ordered more than 200 illegal phone taps of his political enemies as well as the wiretapping and harassment of a young woman who broke off a relationship with him (reftels). He was reelected to the Senate in October 2002. ¶3. (SBU) The case unfolded in public after Magalhaes took some of the juicier tidbits that he learned through the wiretaps to the press in order to smear his enemies. The Senate Ethics Committee, prodded by the victims of the wiretaps and the radical wing of the PT party, then opened a preliminary investigation. Last week, after several weeks of hearing witnesses and reviewing the police report, the Committee voted 8 to 7 to recommend opening formal expulsion proceedings. This recommendation went to the Senate leadership board led by Senate President Sarney for a decision. In a hurried meeting late on April 30, the leadership voted 5 to 2 to reject the recommendation. While the voting, both in the Ethics Committee and the leadership board, followed expected party lines, the leadership sought to justify its decision not to open expulsion proceedings by announcing that ACM should receive only a reprimand for the ethics violation, while the criminal charges would be decided by the Supreme Court once the police finish their investigation. ¶4. (SBU) Given the party makeup of the leadership board and Sarney's views, the April 30 decision was not unexpected, and it does not kill the chance that ACM will be expelled. Under congressional rules, the full Senate can vote to override the leadership's decision, and PT party leader Tiao Viana has promised to introduce such a motion in the coming days. There is no certainty that a motion to force expulsion proceedings will pass on the floor. A preliminary count puts about 30 Senators for and 30 against, with about 20 still in play. If the motion does not pass, the ethics case against ACM will come to a close, likely with some sort of minor reprimand. The police investigation is ongoing and could, at least theoretically, lead to a court conviction. ¶5. (SBU) But if the floor motion passes, then the Ethics Committee would open formal proceedings, at which point ACM would no longer have the option of resigning his seat to keep his political rights. The Ethics Committee has already voted against ACM once, and given the weight of evidence made public, it is conceivable that he could be expelled from the Senate and stripped him of the right to run for public office for eight years. But the denouement is months down the road, and ACM and his allies will use every political and parliamentary trick to keep him in the Senate. ¶6. (SBU) COMMENT. Though diminished, Magalhaes remains one of Brazil's most powerful figures. He has dominated the state of Bahia and the national PFL party for nearly five decades, and recent polling shows that his popularity remains intact in the state. The fact that months after the revelation that he masterminded an enormous wiretapping scheme and mercilessly harassed a young woman who broke off a romance with him, the Senate is still dithering over whether to even open ethics proceedings is testimony to the complicated political expedience that dominates the Brazilian congress. Those in ACM's camp --the PFL plus many in the PMDB and PSDB parties-- are working overtime to stall or shelve the proceedings. Meanwhile, the PT has been surprisingly ambivalent. Leading PT Senator Aloizio Mercadante alternately speaks of the importance of political probity and of the need to keep the Senate agenda free of distractions. The PT is surely calculating that ACM, who supported Lula in the 2002 elections, will be key to passing the administration's high-stakes pension and tax reform bills that went to Congress this week. ¶7. (SBU) In the Brazilian political lexicon, a corrupt politician who escapes punishment is said to be having a pizza. Pundits are now running recipes for vatapa pizza (vatapa being a traditional Bahian dish). It is widely accepted that ACM did what he is accused of doing. Even the lead police investigator commented, "Every street vendor in Bahia knows who ordered the wiretaps." The question is whether he will have to pay the price for his actions. HRINAK