FOR many Brazilians Fernando Collor is a half-remembered figure from a darker past. He achieved notoriety as the president who was impeached for corruption in 1992. Despite his impeachment, Mr Collor has been a senator since 2007. This month he was back in the headlines: federal police raided his home in Brasília, seizing a Ferrari, a Lamborghini and a Porsche, as part of their probe into allegations that some 50 serving politicians received corrupt payments from Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company. He denies the allegations against him.
“All political careers end in failure,” observed Enoch Powell, a British politician. But in Latin America, some seem never to end at all. Take José Sarney, Mr Collor’s predecessor as Brazil’s president, who went on to spend 24 years as a senator, eight of them as the chamber’s president. He stepped down in January, aged 84, but still exercises influence through his son, who is a federal deputy.
Álvaro Uribe, Colombia’s president in 2002-10, now leads the opposition to his successor, Juan Manuel Santos, from a seat in the Senate. In Chile Ricardo Lagos, a statesmanlike former president, is said...
from The Economist: The Americas http://ift.tt/1MKp7Ob
No comments:
Post a Comment