A
protester in Brazil disrupted a congressional hearing on Thursday by
releasing five rodents as an official from the governing party arrived
to answer questions about corruption at the state-run oil company,
Petrobras.
Video
recorded by people at the hearing showed the rodents scurrying in front
of the press pack in Brazil’s lower house of Congress, the Chamber of
Deputies, just after the arrival of João Vaccari Neto, the treasurer of
President Dilma Rousseff’s Workers Party.
Before lawmakers could question Mr. Vaccari, who was charged last month
with trying to disguise millions of dollars in bribes as campaign
contributions, they had to wait for the five rodents to be captured and
the man blamed for smuggling them into the hearing to be removed by
security personnel.
In
case anyone missed the symbolism, Marco Feliciano, a conservative
member of Congress, told readers of his Twitter feed that a rat was a
euphemism for a corrupt person.
Although
the rodents were widely described as rats in initial reports, an expert
consulted by Brazil’s TV Globo identified them as two hamsters and
three gerbils.
A Globo live blog on the hearing featured a video replay of the rodents gamely trying to evade capture and updates throughout the day on their condition and on the fate of the protester, identified as a congressional staff member, who was immediately dismissed.
When the hearing finally got underway, Mr. Vaccari maintained his innocence, telling Mr. Feliciano that testimony implicating him was not truthful.