Brazil’s Ruling Party In Disarray After Attempt to Shield Lula

FEATURING MELEIZA FIGUEROA – A judge has suspended the appointment of former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as chief of staff under current President Dilma Rousseff. Lula, as he has been called by an adoring Brazilian public in the past, faces serious charges of corruption. Rousseff’s appointment of him as her chief of staff seemed to be a blatant attempt to shield her fellow Workers Party member from prosecution through the political immunity that the position would have granted him. Rousseff now faces an impeachment procedure herself.

Meleiza Figueroa is a Ph.D. candidate in geography at the University of California at Berkeley and a producer at KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles. She was head researcher on the 2005 film “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” and has been a longtime social justice activist and organizer in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. She now joins us from Santarem in Brazil where she currently lives.