A Brazilian leader’s faux pas spoke volumes about the state of the BRICS alliance, ahead of the 8th BRICS summit in India. The Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa formation is slowly being written off as a bloc that can administer coherent political action. There were always questions since the early days of BRICS but recent party political changes in some member states have raised the hurdles. In Brasilia last month, foreign minister (and occasional presidential candidate) José Serra told an interviewer that the BRICS included Argentina. And as he stumbled while spelling out the acronym, Serra also had to be prompted to recall that South Africa is a member of BRICS. Well-known Brazilian journalist Luis Nassif concluded that Serra – who has a doctorate in economics from Cornell University and was implicated in various corruption scandals, including favours to western oil companies against Brazil’s own Petrobras – is “neurologically damaged”. With men like Serra and his corrupt p...
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