ABSTRACT
In June of 2005, the first allegations of a rogue politician in a rightwing party in coalition with the ruling Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) seemed spurious enough. The politician himself, Roberto Jefferson, had a long history of allegations of corruption, and of narrowly escaping indictment in Brazil’s last national corruption crisis in 1993. According to celebrity magazines, he had had a makeover, including plastic surgery, before coming forward with the allegations of a “payment for votes” scheme in which the ruling PT doled out a monthly allowance for sympathetic politicians in Congress. The allegations seemed so absurd and at odds with the image of the Workers’ Party as a party of ethical political outsiders that the first reaction by many inside and outside the PT was to denounce Jefferson and the media as organizing a conspiracy and attempting a coup against Lula, the people’s president.
