It's Already Time to Criminally Hold the Rio Grande do Sul State Government Accountable
Under the leadership of the current governor, Mr. Eduardo Leite, the Rio Grande do Sul state government has been slow and inept in handling the environmental crime affecting Porto Alegre, Taquari Valley, Sinos Valley, and the mountain region. Crime, because such tragedies cannot be prevented.
Those who use the two most deceitful arguments (that we should not look for culprits and that what happens in RS is a tragedy) fail to consider, due to incapacity, ignorance, or dishonesty, that these floods are a direct result of the neoliberal austerity policy enacted by the Temer government in 2016 (under the notorious fiscal recovery regime) and intensified by the Satori (aka Sartonaro, PMDB) and Eduardo Leite (aka Bolsonaro with a silk fist, PSDB) administrations. Both are followers of the neoliberal fiscal austerity playbook, dismantling essential services and conceding public sectors to private companies (usually international state-owned enterprises).
It took days for the state government and the municipal government to take any action. Only when the state reported 15 deaths and a hundred warnings from Metsul and INPE did we see the governor's face, mimicking a William Bonner, on social media.
It is important to remember that, in addition to all this incapacity, Governor Eduardo Leite was responsible for the least investment in the state's Civil Defense history: R$50,000. Yes, less than a JK apartment in the Rubem Berta neighborhood for the entire state.
A few more days passed, and the flood reached the capital, Porto Alegre, and then we saw the infamous (as Guimarães Rosa would say) mayor of the city, in a blue-and-orange vest, on TV and radio (only heard on the latter) asking for money and help from the population. The same mayor who helped extinguish the DEP, intends to sell the DMAE, fired 50% of the workforce (it is good to remember that Sebastião Melo has been part of the public administration for 12 years, 8 years as vice mayor and 4 years as mayor), and on January 16, 2024, asked the city's people for chainsaws (because the civil defense did not have any) and then, subsequently, blamed the rain all this time [1]. Manslaughter
Eduardo Leite, Sartori, Marchezan Júnior, and Sebastião Melo are directly guilty of the crime of manslaughter. They intended to do what they did. They were aware of the human risk involved when they sold off and ignored warnings. They are paid and elected to take care of the state and the city. They failed to do so. If a poor person kills someone due to deliberate inoperancy in the face of facts, they are indicted for manslaughter (with intent). Why are these four leaders not?
It is high time for someone - deputies, councilors, Public Ministry, or civil society - to simply open criminal proceedings against these four public administrators. Each of the more than one hundred deaths is a direct result of the actions or omissions of these four, especially.
[1] It is good to remember that Sebastião Melo was also the mayor responsible for not investing a single real in civil defense, for not carrying out any maintenance on Porto Alegre's anti-flood system (even after the floods of 2023), and for starring in a grotesque spectacle during the city's evacuation [2].
[2] Sebastião Melo, through the Civil Defense, ordered on Sunday (May 5) that part of the Sarandi neighborhood (northern zone) be evacuated to the Renascença Theater, 12km away from Sarandi, without any support for moving in a flooded city on the brink of collapse. On Monday, May 6, he ordered, through the Civil Defense, that the pump in the machine house in the regions of Menino Deus and Cidade Baixa, where the evacuees from Sarandi were located, be turned off as a "safety measure" without notifying anyone. The residents of the region, the rescuers, the evacuees/refugees, and the volunteers were caught off guard by the sudden flooding of the streets. The shelter where people were located was flooded in record time, and the generator, under water, was at risk of explosion. People were re-evacuated to a more distant location, walking through the dirty water of the flood and the dark streets of a city under climatic chaos. Sebastião Melo plays on the team of rain, as a friend of mine said.
Furthermore, on Sunday afternoon, the same Sebastião Melo asked people to migrate to the northern coast, as Porto Alegre was under threat of total collapse (water, sewage, and electricity), ignoring that the northern coast would receive 200mm of rain