Joy Train Derailed

To the irreverent citizens of Rio de Janeiro, the city's House of Aldermen is the "Golden Cage" and its pork-packed bills are "joy trains." Last week, the aldermen were happily hooking up a typical joy train--a bill to create 1,541 new jobs for friends of the legislators. But this time, as an announcement was made that the balloting would be secret, the galleries rang with protest. Guards who tried to clear out the demonstrators were outshoved. The aldermen adjourned without voting--an inglorious admission that the joy trains of what is probably Brazil's most corrupt body of lawmakers are coming to the end of the line.

The top perch in the Golden Cage belongs to Speaker Celso Lisboa, 45. The owner of a private school, Lisboa got himself elected in 1950, proved himself a warm friend of the thousands of school-age children in Rio who are deprived of an education by lack of buildings and teachers. He pushed through a bill authorizing the city administration to pay private-school board and tuition for schoolless children. When the bill passed, Lisboa himself bought a second private school, now collects $40,000 a month under the terms of his own bill. Running for re-election as speaker last March, he helped amass a majority among the 50 aldermen by inserting an item into the city budget providing 27 of them with more than $3,000 apiece to represent Rio at the Brussels World's Fair.

The man who threw the switch on Lisboa's joy train is a Rio reporter named Fidelis Amaral Netto. Running himself for a house seat in next October's elec tions, Amaral Netto a fortnight ago confronted the speaker and his cronies during a TV debate. Amaral Netto pointed out that salaries for civil servants attached to the 63-member federal senate are $1,000.-000 a year, and those of the 326-member federal chamber of deputies are $1,890,-000. How, he asked, could these expenses of Rio's 50-aldermen house run up to $2,900,000? Instead of answers, Lisboa left town, admitting that he might have to resign as a "strategic retreat.'' Reporters ran down House First Secretary Rubem Cardoso at Rio's Galeao airport, where he was about to board a plane for Europe. Cardoso protested stoutly. "I am honest," he said. "I am traveling on that $3,400 voted in the house. The others pocketed the cash and stayed home."

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