PERSPECTIVE ON BRAZIL : A Cleansing Before the Dust Settles : While Collor awaits his impeachment trial, the vice president starts coalition-building for a sweeping fiscal reform.

Brazil, which for more than 20 years (from 1964 to 1985) had only military presidents, is now getting used to having two democratically elected civilian presidents: the removed Fernando Collor de Mello, awaiting trial by the Senate after the Chamber of Deputies began the process that may lead to his impeachment for corruption, and Itamar Franco, the former Collor vice president who has set up his own governing team under the most unfavorable circumstances.

A veteran, strong-willed politician, some 20 years older than the 43-year-old and flashy Collor de Mello, Franco managed to stay clear of the corruption accusations now haunting his former running mate in the 1989 election. Franco is, nevertheless, haunted by at least two strong liabilities. He faces a deep recession and massive unemployment, all this backed by a 25%-plus rate of monthly inflation in a country that already has one of the world’s worst records on child mortality, homelessness, unemployment and low minimum wage.

And, Franco may be just an acting president, given the possibility that Collor could be judged innocent in the Senate trial scheduled before Christmas, and thus regain the right to occupy the presidential palace. Realistically, though, Collor’s chances of returning are somewhere close to zero.

He is not only going to be tried by the Senate for “crimes of responsibility,” that is, for having lacked the necessary decorum in the exercise of the presidency, but he is also charged in a process started by the office of the Public Prosecutor with “common crimes”--passive corruption and gang formation. The prosecutor has asked the Supreme Court for authorization to prosecute Collor.

This new authorization should be even easier to get than the first one, giving the growing evidence of Collor’s direct involvement in the racketeering scheme set up by Paulo Cesar Farias, the former head of finances in the presidential campaign first accused by Collor’s younger brother, Pedro (now living comfortably in Miami with his wife).

It is still too early to predict that Fernando Collor de Mello will end up in jail, but it is not too early to imagine that he will be forced to resign before the trial in the Senate in a possible exchange for a dismissal of the charges of common crimes.

So it seems that Itamar Franco has come to stay.

To cope with the immense liabilities ahead of him, he has chosen to govern in a sort of parliamentary manner, acting as both president and prime minister. In anticipation of next April’s plebiscite, when Brazilians are expected to choose between the existing presidential system and a new parliamentary system, Franco has picked most of his ministers and top aides in what may be the broadest congressional coalition in Brazilian history. They go from the president of the conservative Party of the Liberal Front as minister of communications to the president of the Popular Socialist Party--the former Communist Party--as the government leader in the Chamber of Deputies.

Franco will face his first major test in Congress in the next three or four weeks, when he will attempt a rather sweeping fiscal reform aimed at balancing next year’s budget by extinguishing some taxes, creating others and drastically reducing the huge numbers of Brazilians who evade taxes, thus allowing the federal government to regain some of its investment capacity.

No matter what happens in the next weeks--the beleaguered Collor may, or may not, resign; Franco may, or may not, achieve his fiscal reforms--Brazil will enter 1993 as a much different society. The country should be more prepared to reject for good the corruption that once seemed endemic, and better equipped to face the drama of its “street kids,” of its immense social deficit and of the predatory exploitation of it enviable natural resources.