PT tries to recover old-school biography from corruption scandals

The Workers’ Party (PT) is trying to rehabilitate emblematic figures of the party marked by involvement in scandals during the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff governments between 2003 and 2016. The effort is part of the strategy of rewriting the party’s history, forcing a reinterpretation Mensalão, Petrolão, Lava Jato and Dilma’s impeachment as major conspiracies against the party.

The initiative covers the biographical rehabilitation of personalities such as former ministers Guido Mantega and José Dirceu and former deputies José Genoino and João Paulo Cunha. The last three have already been convicted of corruption at some point, while Mantega was prevented from holding any public office for years because of the fiscal pedaling process.

Dirceu, who was arrested four times for different scandals and sentenced to more than 30 years in prison under Lava Jato, gave a long interview to CNN last week and, according to The State of S. Paulohad recent meetings with the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, and the presidents of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), and the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG).

To bring Dirceu back into the country’s political life, the PT will be able to count on the collaboration of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), which tends to annul his convictions, based on former judge Sergio Moro’s allegation of partiality. According to the magazine’s Radar column LookDirceu has signaled to friends that he is optimistic about his possible judicial and political rehabilitation.

Matter of People’s Gazette showed that Dirceu responds to proceedings in freedom due to decisions made by ministers of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), after being arrested four times for corruption, between 2013 and 2019. He even feels comfortable saying publicly that Mensalão “never existed ”. The sentence for active corruption that he received due to this scandal was extinguished. He was recently acquitted in a Lava Jato conviction and still has another. As a result of the operation, he was sentenced to sentences of up to 39 years for conspiracy, ideological falsehood, passive corruption, money laundering, receiving undue advantage, among other crimes.

In the case of Guido Mantega, former Minister of Finance, the PT and President Lula lobbied in January to place him in charge of Vale, the country’s second largest company. The PT members retreated a few days ago after a negative market reaction.

João Paulo Cunha, former president of the Chamber of Deputies, who was arrested in the Mensalão scandal, was hired in September 2023 as a lawyer by J&F, according to the newspaper The globe.

José Genoino, convicted in the Mensalão scandal, had removed himself from the political scene, but returned as an active activist in 2023 – for now, without seeking office. In addition to participating in meetings with PT leaders, he has given frequent interviews to far-left media outlets and the Perseu Abramo Foundation and PT websites. In one of them, in January, he held a demonstration suggesting a boycott of Jewish businesspeople, which led to accusations of anti-Semitism against him.

Rescue of bigwigs shows difficulty in renewing the PT

The controversy with Genoino shows that the attempt to rewrite history can come up against the very defects of the figures that the PT tries to rehabilitate. For political scientist Adriano Cerqueira, professor at Ibmec-BH and the Federal University of Ouro Preto (Ufop), the strategy of returning these characters to the center of political life could end up being a shot in the foot.

“They think it could have some effect within the PT bubble, but it rarely happens. The effectiveness of this PT strategy is very fragile,” he says.

For Cerqueira, social media weakened the PT’s ability to manipulate public opinion, but the party’s narratives still find support in environments such as the press and universities. He says that the party is “parked in the most traditional mechanisms of public opinion”, as social networks tend to unmask it.

“The PT, as it is a Marxist party, a left-wing party, often follows, apparently, that Stalinist method of rewriting history, of defrauding the narratives about history”, he states. “But politics today has been captured by social media, and this is greatly weakening the PT’s ability to sell its narrative. But social media, so far, is barely manageable in this sense, and only with non-democratic measures , authoritarian, is that its impact can be contained”, he comments.

Cerqueira considers that the PT’s attempt to rescue figures like Dirceu, Genoino and Mantega also exposes the low renewal in the party. “These are old figures. The PT is losing its ability to renew itself politically among the electorate. And one of the symptoms of this difficulty in renewal is trying to politically rescue figures who remained in the past due to bad management and allegations of corruption.”

In addition to trying to politically rehabilitate its old guard, the PT has also used their experience to train its future representatives. In 2023, the Perseu Abramo Foundation, linked to the party, called Genoino, Dirceu and Mantega to teach different courses.