SOUTH AMERICA : Constitutional Reform Flickers Out in Brazil : Deadline nears for final review of the document’s 245 articles. In nearly seven months, lawmakers have passed four reforms.

One day early this month, in a silent hall of Congress, Inocencio de Oliveira, president of Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, saw the electronic panel that registers the congressional head count flashing bad news. The deadline for revising Brazil’s constitution was approaching, and once again there would be no quorum that day in Brasilia, the nation’s capital.

“The reform is dead,” Oliveira said before a gallery of empty seats. “It’s just a matter of burying it.”

Since Brazil became independent in 1822, the highest law in the land has been redone seven times. The latest constitution, written in 1988, was supposed to be different. It righted many wrongs, burying the fiat of earlier regimes by strengthening Congress and restoring power and revenue to neglected states and towns. It addressed the need for food for the hungry, work for the unemployed and shelter for the homeless.

The constitution promised so much--”heaven on earth,” one former minister was fond of saying--that it became almost impossible to implement. But the 1988 legislature had thought to include a safety valve: a clause to hold the document, with its 245 articles, up for review in five years.

That review was launched, as planned, last October. It was scrapped, for all practical purposes, last week, a victim of the fractious politics that only a thorough review might have mended.

Not that legislators didn’t try. When Congressman Nelson Jobim, the rapporteur of the review process, opened the first reform session, he had a startling 17,000 amendments on his desk. But many of Jobim’s colleagues were put off by his brusque, arbitrary ways. They blocked the review with stonewalling tactics or merely by staying away.

The parties of the left, led by Luis Inacio Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party, would hear no talk of dismantling state-run enterprises or reversing the social welfare benefits they authored in 1988. The right wing did its best to do just that, arguing that such policies are driving Brasilia to bankruptcy.

Many politicians were preoccupied during the reform process by the drawn-out investigations into corruption in the legislature. Many more were distracted by their own campaigns for the Oct. 3 general elections.

As a result, in close to seven months, four amendments passed the obligatory two rounds of votes. Most dealt with minor matters.

The list of things undone is enormous. The political system remains lopsided, for example. There are 19 political parties represented in Congress, and electoral rules give legislators from small states proportionately far more power than those from large ones. This often leaves the president hostage to the demands of tiny parties and states.

There are still a few working days left for Congress before the revision deadline expires May 31. But no one believes that Congress can, or should, try to do in a few sessions the job it has neglected for half a year. Instead, Oliveira and Jobim are pushing to delay the review until after the October elections. Most of the benefits of a new charter would not take effect until 1996.

A delay could be costly. The social welfare system is hemorrhaging money. New investment is hamstrung by constitutional restrictions on foreign capital. And while lawmakers in 1988 proudly reserved “strategic” sectors such as mining, petroleum and telecommunications for the state, these sectors are now broke.

“The delayed reform is bad news for the longer-term health of the economic plan,” said Walder de Goes, a Brazilian political scientist. “And each plan that fails is one more reason for the people not to believe the next one.”

Halting Reform

In nearly seven months, Brazil’s Congress has passed four items of constitutional reform:

The social emergency fund, a $16-billion account that gives Brasilia the flexibility to pay its bills without printing money and driving up inflation.

An amendment giving Congress more powers to summon Cabinet ministers for interrogation.

An 18-month suspension of the political rights of ministers caught abusing the powers of their office.

A law allowing Brazilian citizens with foreign passports the right to dual citizenship.