|
Home>News Center>World | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Brazil's cabinet chief of staff resigns
A top Cabinet official resigned Thursday over accusations he knew of a vote-buying scheme in Congress, becoming the highest-ranking official hit by a scandal that has shaken President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's administration. Chief of Staff Jose Dirceu was accused by congressman Roberto Jefferson of involvement in a plan to pay legislators a monthly bribe to support the Silva's Workers Party.
The scandal erupted last week when Jefferson charged that the Workers Party paid monthly "allowances" to congressmen to keep the fragile governing coalition intact. The leftist party does not have a majority in Congress and relies on support from other parties to pass legislation. Silva has responded to the allegations by promising to "leave no stone unturned" to resolve the issue. But the fallout has handed him, Brazil's first leftist president, his worst political crisis since he took office in 2003. Dirceu is the most prominent official hit by the scandal. The job of chief of staff is a Cabinet-level post and he was considered on of Silva's most influential ministers. Dirceu strongly denied he was involved, and Jefferson admitted he had no proof. But the accusations sent shock waves through Brazilian financial markets with stocks plunging before rebounding. Dirceu said he would work in Congress to disprove "the baseless accusations against me, my party and my government." "I don't consider myself out of the government," he said. "I will mobilize the PT against those who ... want to destabilize President Lula."
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
