Number 45, September 18, 1992

NATIONAL POLITICS

- Support for President Collor's impeachment grows.

The number of President Collor's supporters continues to decline, and there already is consensus among the main forces of the elites, civil society, and the military establishment in favor of Collor's impeachment. Among the organizations which support Collor's removal is the powerful Industrial Federation of the State of Sao Paulo, which contributed financially to the infrastructure of today's mass rally for impeachment in Sao Paulo.

- Collor's mother suffers cardiac arrest.

Leda Collor, mother of President Collor, suffered a cardiac arrest yesterday and is in very serious condition in a hospital in Rio de Janeiro. Dona Leda has been shaken by the scandals involving her son Fernando, ever since her youngest son Pedro publically accused the president of benefitting from the activities of Paulo Cesar Farias.

- Attorney General incriminates President in PC Farias Affair.

The legal opinion issued by federal Attorney General Aristedes Junqueira has reverberated intensely throughout the country. "The testimony and declarations collected in this investigation", says Junqueira, "combined with the documented evidence, reveal the occurence of criminal deeds, whose vehement signs of authorship fall back on the President of the Republic."

- Bornhausen resigns.

The political coordinator of the Collor government, Jorge Bornhausen, resigned last week, due to his eroding influence in government brought on by the PC Farias affair. However, it appears that the Minister of Justice, Celio Borja, and Economic Minister Marcilio Marques Moreira will remain in their posts until Congress decides whether or not to accept the petition to open impeachment porceedings against President Collor.

- Impeachment update.

The Federal Supreme Tribunal (STF) decision to extend the period in which President Collor has to defend himself in this initial phase of the impeachment proceedings "does nothing to

alter the process", according to Marcel Lavenere, president of the Federal Council of the Brazilian Bar Association. In Lavenere's opinion, the STF, in its decision, legitimated the impeachment process.

Meanwhile, in Congress, federal deputies have been able to guarantee the quorum needed to fulfill the time period, and keep Congress on track for an impeachment vote at the end of the month.

September 22 is the last day for President Collor to present his defense before the special congressional committee examining the impeachment petition. The committee will conclude its work on September 24. The committee must then vote by the 26th on the opinion to be reported by Federal Deputy Nelson Jobim. This report will go to a final vote in the lower House of Deputies in Congress on September 27 and 28. During these two days, Presidnet Collor, if he wishes, will be able to defend himself personally before Congress.

The House of Deputies will then decide, by a two-thirds majority vote, whether to authorize the formal opening of the process to remove Collor from office, on September 29 and 30. (Coincidentally, these dates mark the end of the free radio and TV electoral propaganda for the first round of municipal elections.) If the House obtains the two-thirds majority, the impeachment process will begin in the Senate and Collor will automatically be removed from office for 180 days. If condemned by the Senate, Collor will lose his mandate and will not be able to hold public office for eight years.

- Pro-impeachment demonstrations continue throughout Brazil.

Presidents of opposition parties and pro-impeachment leaders met in Brasilia on Wednesday to strategize the next steps in the movement for the impeachment of President Collor. Demonstrations are scheduled today in Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, Joao Pessoa, Campina Grande, and Porto Velho.

In Sao Paulo, Governor Luiz Antonio Fleury Filho, Mayor Luiza Erundina, and opposition party and labor union leaders expect one million people to participate in today's rally for impeachment. The demonstration also has the support of Sao Paulo archbishop Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, who backed his priests' calling on Catholics to participate in the rally. The day's events began with a students' march organized by the National Union of Students (UNE) and the Brazilian Union of Secondary Students (UBES).

Other demonstrations have been scheduled for next week - in Rio de Janeiro on the 21st, Recife and Salvador on the 22nd, and Porto Alegre on the 23rd. The biggest demonstrations and a national work stoppage day are expected to occur during the last week of September, when the vote for impeachment takes place in Congress.

- Women's Movement calls for impeachment.

A National Organization of Women for Impeachment has been formed, and has the support of feminist groups throughout Brazil. The group's manifesto states that women "committed to the expansion of citizens' rights in the country" protest against "the corruption and lack of decorum in the exercise of the supreme office of the Brazilian Nation." The women demand that the Federal Supreme Tribunal "fulfill its duty and respond to the yearnings of society, by judging, removing, and punishing a president who, involved in a series of illicit activities which dishonor his mandate and offend the dignity of the people, has lost his legitimacy."

- Collor goes on the offensive.

According to political sources in Brasilia, and members of the Movement for Ethics in Politics, President Collor is prepared to jam up the voting process on the petition of impeachment.

Collor's efforts center on delaying the vote in Congress until after municipal elections are held on October 3. The president believes that, after the first round of elections, it will be easier to buy the votes of federal deputies who base their political philosophy on the phrase, "it is in giving that we receive."

Collor has also decided to go after leading opposition figures, particularly the president of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) Orestes Quercia, Workers Party (PT) president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and Senator Amir Lando, who chaired the congressional commission which investigated PC Farias. Collor ordered the Federal Revenue Service to investigate the personal financial records of these politicians. The president is seeking to damage the PT and the CUT labor union with accusations against these two organizations' receipt of funds from foreign organizations and political parties. Opposition leaders expressed their revolt towards these actions, and said that they indicate "the desperateness of Collor's cause."

HUMAN RIGHTS

- CPI on political espionage suffers threats.

A Parliamentary Investigating Commission (CPI) looking into political espionage activities of the civil and military police in Rio Grande do Sul is being pressure and receiving anonymous threats. Preliminary conclusions indicate that the state's governor, Alceu Collares, has been investigated by the political police of PM-2, the intelligence service of the Military Brigade.

ECOLOGY

- Patent Law concerns NGOs and scientists.

Research institutes, churches, and NGOs are intensifying their efforts against the Collor government's proposal for a new Industrial Property Law, which creates the possibility of patenting living beings. The vote on the bill gained a new dimension after President Collor's national television and radio address on August 30, in which he blamed Congress for paralyzing legislation which will put Brazil on the path to modernity. Collor specifically cited the Industrial Property Law.

President Collor had the measure, known as 824/91, introduced in Congress last April. The bill was first examined by a congressional commission led by Federal Deputy Roberto Campos, named by congressional watchdog groups as "the defender of foreign interests in Congress."

In fact, foreign lobbyists have put great pressure on the proceedings of this legislation. The Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science (SBPC), claimed that even before the terms of bill 824/91 were made public, they were already known by United States lawyer Robert M. Sherwood. The SBPC alleged that Sherwood, "a known lobbyist of important North American businesses", sent a fax dated February 27, 1991, to a funcionary of the National Institute of Industrial Propert, giving suggestions for the government bill, two months before the measure was sent to Congress. Sherwood is a graduate of Hrvard University, the epicenter of the earthquake cause by the biotechnologicl advances which are the background of the discussion on patents of living beings.

The proposed legislation would open the doors for patenting microorganisms. Because of advances in biotechnology, the current concept of a microorganism may mean each cell of a living creature-plants, animals, human beings-isolated in laboratories. This is the thinking of, and the warning from, Carlos Jorge Rossetto, a researcher at the Agronomy Institute of Campinas, Sao Paulo (IAC), one of the institutes whihc hs actively participated in debates over the patent bill.

The possibility of patenting microorganisms received the immediate opposition of the National Conference of the Bishops of Brazil (CNBB), the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession (IECLB), and other churches and groups. Their pressure worked, and the legislation's new sponsor, Federal Deputy Ney Lopes, removed the possibility of patenting microorganisms in a substitute bill, whihc should come to a vote by the end of the year.

However, Rossetto claims, the possibility of patenting living beings remains in the substitute measure, which anticipates patents of biotechnological processes. The researcher recalls that the patent question turned the Treaty on Biodiversity into one of the most polemic issues of the Earth Summit. The Treaty, which was not signed by U.S. President George Bush, foresees a series of benefits for those countries with great biodiversity-and many of these countries are in the Third World. Brazil, with its Amazon Region, is the most biodiverse country in the world, and in theory would benefit the most from the Biodiversity Treaty.

The government bill, and the Ney Lopes substitute bill, notes Rossetto, are contrary to the Biodiversity Treaty, as both allow for patenting, without any great benefits to Brazil, by large international groups which control biotechnology research. "With patenting, a Brazilian farmer or a research institute will have to pay royalties for a species of vegetation native to Brazil, but was patented by a multinational group," says Rossetto. For these reasons, the patent bill may be one of the most controversial in Congress, once the crisis of the PC Farias affair comes to an end.

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