Brazil: political assassinations begin

The latest victim is, predictably, a member of the Partido Trabalhista (PT - Labour party), whose candidate for the presidential elections, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula) is currently leading the opinion polls.

Celso Daniel was murdered with eight shots around 24 hours after his kidnapping. Now, another prefect belonging to the PT has been threatened, on the Military Police line in Guarulhos. Eloi Pieta, the prefect of this city, is the latest figure to receive a death threat.

“It is not the first time. Four months ago, shortly after the death of (Campinas prefect) Toninho, I discovered that there was a plan to commit an attack against me”, he said.

He went on to state that it was no longer possible to claim that the orchestrated campaign of assassinations and death threats against opposition politicians was a coincidence. “Of the four largest cities of the state, we have already lost two prefects. This is something which in the area of mathematics leads us to believe that there is a political manoeuvring behind this”.

Political culling, snipping off the buds of the most promising new flowers before they open, is a mainstay in Latin American politics. The only way many movements have of staying alive is by taking up arms and adopting a formal and declared stance of hostility against the central governments.

Such a stance is branded as terrorism, especially by the United States of America, a country which has systematically been responsible for the violation of human rights, overtly or covertly, in this continent.

Marcia MIRANDA PRAVDA.Ru BRAZIL