Weekly Report - 3 February 2004

President Lula da Silva's chief of staff, José Dirceu, said last week that congress should look seriously at the possibility of legislating to curtail press freedom in cases involving the national interest. What prompted this was the reopening of a two-year-old murder case now allegedly involving a slush fund of the ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) with a trail leading all the way to the party's then-president: none other than Dirceu.