A Chance for Change in Brazil's Scandal

For the past two years, Brazil has been mired in the costliest corruption scandal ever uncovered in a democracy. Evidence surfaced in 2014 that contractors in Brazil had formed an alliance to overbid on projects for government-owned energy company Petroleo Brasileiro (Petrobras). Contractors pocketed the extra cash and bribed politicians and Petrobras executives to keep quiet. The scandal — the investigation of which came to be known as "Operation Carwash" — was so blatant and implicated such prominent political figures that it shocked Brazil, a country accustomed to high-level corruption. And now the odds that Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, will survive the fallout are looking slimmer and slimmer.

The Brazilian middle class reacted swiftly and harshly to the Petrobras revelations, staging massive protests whose scope eventually transcended the scandal. More than corruption, the protests are about waning patience with the ruling party as Brazil's economic recession drags into its second year. Swept up in the frustration is Rousseff, who has not been directly implicated in the Petrobras scandal, though she served as the company's chair for several years. Instead, Rousseff faces imminent impeachment proceedings, set to be voted upon in Brazil's lower house of congress April 17, for allegedly manipulating government budgets in 2014 to make the country's budget deficit appear smaller ahead of an election. The Petrobras affair supplied more fodder against her and proof, in the eyes of her detractors, of her ineptitude.