BRASILIA, Brazil — Nepotism is good. Homosexuality is bad. Getting pregnant through rape is a "horrible accident."
Severino Cavalcanti, the author of these sentiments, is on a roll. When he was but a lowly back-bench congressman, such public pronouncements might have earned him a passing sneer in a political column. Now that he's one of Brazil's most powerful men, Cavalcanti's controversial declarations have landed him on front pages across the country.
The politically incorrect lawmaker has commanded the spotlight since February, when he stunned just about everyone in Brazil with his election as president of the National Congress. His supporters in Congress rejoiced: He was one of their own, a man who might do them a few favors -- like giving them a pay raise, one of his chief promises when he campaigned for the leadership. But many in Brazil were mortified.
Depending on whom you talk to, Cavalcanti is either a champion of legislative independence or a career politician keen to advance the interests of career politicians. He's a paragon of conservative moral virtue, shaped by his devout Catholicism, or a buffoonish symbol of the retrograde forces holding Brazil back.
Everyone, however, agrees on one thing: Just months into his new office, Cavalcanti has become a headache for the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Soon after his election, the 74-year-old legislator from Brazil's depressed northeast forced the government to back down on a tax increase affecting mostly professionals and farmers. He demanded greater congressional control over the federal budget. He has threatened to challenge Lula's constitutionally allowed executive decrees.
"Severino is a national leader now," said Luciano Dias, a political consultant in Brasilia, the capital, who has worked with Cavalcanti's Progressive Party. "He was an obscure deputy from a backwater state. Now he's the man who's the anti-Lula."
As president of Congress, Cavalcanti wields power similar to that of the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, able to decide if or when legislation comes to a vote. Government-urged reforms of the central bank and trade unions are now at risk of being diluted, delayed or killed, analysts say -- setbacks that could complicate Lula's bid for reelection next year.
Many here say Lula has only himself to blame. Normally, the leader of Congress is a member of the president's party, but Lula chose as his candidate a left-wing deputy from his Workers' Party, or PT, who lacked strong relationships with legislators.
