Renan Calheiros Steps Down

Brazil's president of the Senate, Renan Calheiros, resigned his post. While he had insisted he would not make such a move earlier this year, Calheiros, after a 45-day leave of absence, announced his resignation yesterday. While speculation for his motivations can abound, it certainly doesn't hurt that his resignation prevents his colleagues in the Senate from carrying through a vote to ban him from politics for 8 years.

As I said in September when this was becoming a bigger and bigger scandal, Calheiros' scandal, while rather "salacious", I think probably still won't hurt Lula. Yes, he was an ally of Lula's in the Senate, but not through any personal connections. Calheiros and Lula simply worked together because Calheiros was simply the acting president of the Senate and a member of the multi-party coalition that includes Lula's PT in the Senate (Brazil is one of the few examples in the world of presidential parliamentarianism). Additionally, his departure allows the Senate to actually get back to legislating other issues such as budgets, taxes (including the CPMF, a tax involving bank accounts, which, in a case of absurd contrarianism and the basest of partisan politics, the opposition party is adamantly protesting, despite the fact that that it was a president from their party that put the tax into effect with the support of the party and party senators in the 1990s. But now that Lula also supports it, it must go, dammit!), and other policies that matter far more to daily life in Brazil than the questionable dealings of a politician from Brazil's North.