If anyone doubts that last week’s acquittal of Renan Calheiros, president of Brazil’s Senate, was anything but a shameful act, they need only ask the senators themselves. One blogger tracked how 74 of the 81 said they had voted in a secret ballot of Mr Calheiros’s upper house peers, only to find that Mr Calheiros, by this count, had been condemned by 43 senators – enough to expel him from Congress – rather than the 35 who actually voted against him. Of the 40 who voted in his favour, only 10 admitted as much.

Some of those who voted against their consciences apparently did so in the belief that, once absolved, Mr Calheiros would keep his side of the bargain and take a leave of absence - neatly removing himself, handing the job to a government supporter (Tião Viana of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s PT, the Senate vice-president) and avoiding a messy election for his successor, which would have been necessary had he been expelled.