Opening date: July 31, 2012
Location: Brasilia, capital of Brazil
Main Visitor: Hugo Chávez, looking much better than Lula.
Hostess: Dilma Rousseff, happy as she is fully on the spotlights this time. Marina Silva was honoured with carrying along the Olympic Flag on 27. Dilma enjoys best the dirty arena of other sorts of champions. We are stormed with claims of bigger markets, more trade, more jobs. More of the usual money-for-the-sake-of-money principle, those who elected Dilma and Lula understand well. We also already know Ms Rousseff finds green talks merely dreamlike stuff.
Who flushes? The president of Uruguay, chin all the way down.
The mood of the hostess: Paraguay? Poor chap. Leave it there, grumbling about rights and contracts. We need Chávez come very close to the Supreme Court so that the emblematic 'Mensalão' corruption trial is overshadowed by the 'amazing' size of the order Chávez set to Embraer, as Mercosur spreads its wings and takes off - once again - from a side lane.
Press reaction: Brazilian O Estado de S.Paulo issues editorial on Aug 1st. The title says Mercosur wears red cap (Mercosul de boina vermelha) and the text elaborates on the error to seal it as 'a childish mess in diplomacy' (lambança diplomática) on the part of the three active prior members: Brazil, Argentine and Uruguay.
It may turn out, however, that the trial ends intertwined with the yet another flight. If only, by chance, the Ministry of Education in Brazil has that editorial printed out in a textbook and teachers - even in the northeast of the country - are fascinated with it and incite students to deeply embrace democracy and reject corruption. For one single fair reason, rolling things for years till the Mensalão trial takes place has been as resource-consuming, teachers would point out, as pushing the Lula-fashion-PT power plan forward. The latter has required pairing up the blessing of the Vatican and the curse of the charismatic authoritarian leadership everywhere else, the South American's first, it seems. Destination airport for the bloc? World Doom.
