Using food to steal from the starving

They say that anyone who actively wants to be a politician should be prevented from being one on principle. It’s a cynical way of looking at things, but then it’s not exactly breaking news that politics attracts its fair share of dishonest characters. If we take the example of the UK over the last decade, scandal after scandal has emerged with depressing regularity – politicians accepting money to ask questions in parliament, widespread cheating of expense allowances (i.e. stealing), and over-cosy relationships with evil media moguls to name just a few.

Despite the regularity of political scandals back home, since coming to Brazil I have been shocked not only by how widespread the corruption here seems to be, but also by the sheer audacity and greed with which it is perpetrated.

Sadly it is all too easy to become desensitised to all this dishonesty, but even against this background, every once in a while a story comes along that takes my breath away.

I was sitting on the bus on my way to work last week, when I opened my copy of Época (an excellent magazine that blends current affairs, politics, science, art, etc). I was immediately confronted with this rather unprepossessing looking character, Roseana Sarney.

Roseana Sarney (Photo: Karlos Geromy/OIMP/D.A Press)

A few facts about Roseana’s father, José Sarney. He was the first post-dictatorship president of Brazil. He has held public office (in one role or another), without a break since 1958. He owns all the important newspapers and TV stations in his home state of Maranhão. He is widely regarded as an oligarch and has been repeatedly accused of corruption and nepotism.

Hmmm, nepotism… Anyway, José’s daughter Roseana is the state governor of Maranhão. And apparently her father has been a great inspiration to her. The article in Época related to the the amount of (public) money that Roseana and her vice governor spend on food and beverages. Eyebrows were initially raised because this years submission was up 40% on last year.

Closer inspection showed that something truly extraordinary has been going on at the Palácio dos Leóes, the official residence. The total bill for 2012 will be R$ 1.14 million (US$ 545,000), paying for 68.2 tons of food and 23,500 litres of drink. Época specialises in interesting statistics and infographics and this story was tailor made for them:

Full credit to the people at Época, this is taken straight from the article on their website. I have just translated the labels.

Another item on the list caught my eye – 160kgs of fresh lobster! The drinks list is also impressive. Highlights include nearly 20,000 litres of soft drinks, 1,200 litres of beer, 452 bottles of champagne and other sparkling wines, nearly 200 bottles of whisky.

All in all enough to feed 211 people for a year. OK, so you’re thinking that they host a lot of business lunches and official engagements? Well the article goes on to tell us that the equivalent bill for the state of Rio Grande do Norte is less than 5% of Roseana Sarney’s.

When first asked to comment, officials said that the food and drink was not only for the governor and vice-governor, but also for various officials at the residence and also assorted other workers and guards. Later on they expanded this list to include a local firefighting unit.

Of course, I don’t think anyone really believes that she is eating all this food. Actually I rather like the idea of her holding her hands up and saying “Look, I’m sorry. I was just really, really hungry!”. No, the implication of Época’s article is that perhaps ‘someone’ is stealing here. As one eagle-eyed reader pointed out in the next week’s letters section, it wasn’t just the quantities involved that were shocking – it was the prices. The official documents indicate a price of nearly R$15 (around US$ 8 ) per kilo of tomatoes! And so we see what is probably really going on here – inflate the prices and then pocket the difference.

At times I found myself almost laughing as I read this story. The pure audacity of it all was almost funny. Except the smile faded when I read a few facts about Maranhão, the state that Roseana governs. Maranhão is one of the poorest in Brazil. 13% of the population live below the poverty line. 65% suffer food insecurity. Stealing from starving people is a terrible thing to do. But to use food as the method to do it? Well that seems almost sadistic don’t you think? The final line of the article sums things up nicely: “These data suggest that the authorities of Maranhão need to treat the provision of food as a priority. And not just in the Governor’s palace.”