Brazilian Politics

PMLF · Mar 17, 2015

Interesting article from the 'Foreign Policy' site: http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/16...-rousseff-downfall-brazil-protests-petrobras/

Greasing the Path to Dilma’s Downfall

Amid a massive oil scandal and a stagnant economy, Brazil’s right has found the opening it’s been waiting for to break 12 years of Workers’ Party rule.

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s right has taken to the streets in a way unlike anything the country has seen since the return to democracy nearly three decades ago. On Sunday, hundreds of thousands took part in marches and rallies around the country to voice their discontent with President Dilma Rousseff, her center-left Workers’ Party (PT), a stagnant economy, and a high-profile, wide-ranging corruption scandal at the state-run oil company, Petrobras.

Lively crowds wearing green and yellow marched on the lawn in front of the Brasília Congress and as many as 200,000 paraded down São Paulo’s central avenue under the banner “Impeach Dilma.” In Rio’s iconic beachside neighborhood of Copacabana, residents unfurled Brazilian flags from their windows and waved them at the thousands of demonstrators below who wore national soccer team jerseys and red clown noses. Similar marches were reported in more than 100 cities.

The demonstrations were organized largely through social media by conservative and anti-corruption groups like the libertarian “Free Brazil Movement” and the more moderate “Come to the Street” activist group, which did not explicitly support impeaching Rousseff and says it protests for ethics in politics and an efficient state. While a handful of demonstrators called for a military coup — an echo of the 1964 coup that still lives in many Brazilians’ memories — many protesters said they thought that impeaching Rousseff, realistically, would lead to chaos.

Still, it appeared to be a watershed moment after 12 uninterrupted years of PT rule. The center-left party’s opponents are winning converts and showing the strength of Brazil’s conservative base. And if protesters keep their promises to stay in the streets, they will be a force to reckon with as the young democracy navigates its ongoing political and economic crises.

Rousseff’s supporters have tried to paint the protesters as coming from a small segment of wealthy Brazilians resentful of the PT’s redistributive economic policies. But the size of Sunday’s demonstrations, and the fact that her center-right opponent won 48 percent of the vote in last year’s runoff, show that the conservative force may not be easy to write off.

Protesters chanted against Rousseff and the PT’s left-wing policies, raising comparisons with Venezuela, Argentina, and Cuba. In Rio they held signs that read, “Against the Bolivarian dictatorship,” referring to the colonial-era revolutionary figure held dear by Latin America’s left, and waved placards calling for “Less Marx, more Mises,” citing the late Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, whose work is influential in libertarian circles.

“When we voted for the PT, we believed in something that was supposed to be immaculate. They sold us a proposal that was supposed to be a party for the workers,” Joselice Calmon, 61, a retired employee of Brazil’s federal pension agency, said as a crowd of thousands around her chanted, “Down with the PT!”

Calmon said she voted for Rousseff’s predecessor, the charismatic union leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, when he first won the presidency in 2002, but she soon became disenchanted with him and his party. “We don’t belong to this class of people whom Dilma co-opts by giving them the [anti-poverty monthly stipend] Bolsa Família, free bus passes, and I-don’t-even-know-what other welfare programs.”

But it’s not just a feeling that spending is out of control or that the party caters to the poor to the exclusion of the rest of the country that brought Brazilians to the streets. Many expressed more moderate positions that are broadly shared, like the need to improve public health and education and ongoing resentment over rising bus fares, inflation, and high taxes.

Day-to-day challenges have helped stoke the fire, too. A water crisis is leaving many residents of São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, with dry taps on a daily basis. A January blackout in 11 states alarmed Brazilians and raised fears of rationing. And Rousseff’s administration has hinted at upcoming hikes in energy prices. The Brazilian currency, the real, has tumbled since Rousseff’s October re-election, reaching its lowest value against the dollar in more than a decade. The president’s popularity is the lowest of any Brazilian president’s in 15 years.

But it’s the graft investigation, which includes more than 50 current and former politicians, mostly allied with the PT, that has most exasperated Brazilians. Over the past year, the investigation — dubbed by police the “Car Wash Operation” — has uncovered allegations of a vast bribery scheme from contractors of the state oil company that led to the coffers of the PT and Petrobras in exchange for tens of billions of dollars in contracts. Rousseff was Petrobras’s chairwoman from 2003 to 2010, the period when much of the graft is alleged to have taken place.

Publicly, her administration has not resisted the investigations and she has even expressed support for the right of protesters to take to the streets. Rousseff wrote last week on her Facebook account, “I’m from a time when it wasn’t possible to protest, no. People who protested went straight to jail or were called subversive.”

For Brazil’s right, Rousseff’s owning up to the investigations isn’t cutting it. The president hasn’t been placed under investigation yet, and analysts have said that she could not plausibly have been a part of the scheme. But that may change. A former Petrobras executive testified last week that he had funneled $300 million in illicit funds to Rousseff’s 2010 campaign.

However, impeaching Rousseff, who was re-elected to a second term just five months ago, seems unrealistic. But the force of the demonstrations may play into her opposition’s hands, as Rousseff looks less like a former Marxist guerrilla than the face of unpopular austerity measures, a tanking economy, and a once high-performing state oil company now brought to its knees by a graft scandal.

A right-wing member of Congress from Rousseff’s coalition submitted a petition for her impeachment on Friday, though, in a twist, it’s his party that has the most members cited in the ongoing graft investigations.

Rousseff and the PT’s current headaches make the success story that Brazilian leaders had told the world and their voters just a few years ago seem like a distant memory. From the 2008 global financial crisis onward, Brazil’s leadership said their country had avoided the worst of the crisis. Brazil’s economy continued to post growth rates averaging 3 percent and kept unemployment at 8 percent or below. The governmentannounced in 2007 the discovery of massive offshore oil that gave it hopes of becoming a major oil exporter. It boasted that millions of Brazilians had been lifted from poverty and entered the middle class through social welfare policies like the Bolsa Família, and that improved workers’ rights and increased wages have allowed a new class of Brazilians to become consumers. And Brazil won bids to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, seen as coming-of-age markers for a country stepping up to its place on the global stage.

But at the same time, Brazilians’ discontent has grown. The government was taken aback by a spate of nationwide street demonstrations in mid-2013, stoked by a rise in the bus fare and broadening into diverse causes. Those protests began with diffuse demands from across the political spectrum, but eventually coalesced on positions from the left, like free public transit and protesting removals of low-income favelas for construction projects related to international sporting events. While demonstrators on the far left remained in the streets through the World Cup the following year, the escalation of conflicts between the police and protesters and the narrowing of demands represented led many to leave the streets.

For many in the alternative media groups and activist collectives on Brazil’s far left who saw their agendas amplified over the past two years of street demonstrations, Sunday’s movement represented an alarming move away from the goals they had helped bring to the public consciousness. Many panned the Sunday protests as golpista, or coup-supporting — a dark comparison with the 1964 coup, which brought a military dictatorship to power for 21 years.

But many of Sunday’s demonstrators said they were present in 2013, too, with anti-corruption banners. This time around, though, it’s conservative forces that have the most to gain. “For conservatives to protest and present themselves openly this way is new,” said João Roberto Lopes Pinto, a professor at UniRio and the coordinator of the More Democracy Institute, which studies the relationship between Brazil’s largest businesses and the government.

The potential for Sunday’s protest became evident a week beforehand, when Rousseff addressed austerity measures and the Brazilian economy on national TV. She blamed the country’s economic ails on the continuing effects of the global financial crisis.

Protesters went to their windows during the speech and banged cooking pans in a protest that was nicknamed the panelaço, “the big pans.” A joke about panelaço that spread on social media said that pot-bangers had to first ask their maids where the pot was.

But analysts caution that writing off the current demonstrations as just an expression from the elite ignores how deep a conservative strain runs through Brazilian society. “You have to realize that the population in general is not far left by any means. We are talking a population that is very traditional, a center-right electorate,” said Bruno Borges, a political scientist at Rio de Janeiro’s state university. That translates to a Brazilian who often will hold conservative social views on issues like the war on drugs and abortion and complain about high taxes and a bloated state. The same person may still strive to get coveted jobs in the public sector and does not question whether the country should have public health care but instead protests its inefficiency.

Sunday’s outpouring is just one of several ways Brazil’s right is raising its head. A new libertarian party, which simply calls itself Novo, or “New,” plans to field candidates in next year’s local elections. Last year Brazilians elected their most conservative Congress since the return to democracy, seeing a rise in evangelical legislators, politicians linked to agro-business, and the so-called “bullet caucus,” or hard-liners on public security who often have a background in law enforcement.

The Free Brazil Movement describes its political orientation as libertarianism “without Bolivarianism or militarism.” Renan Henrique Ferreira Santos, a national coordinator for the Free Brazil Movement, beat back against the perception that Sunday’s protesters came only from resentful members of the country’s upper echelons.

“The PT is the elite,” he said in an interview. “The PT controls a machine that puts 50 percent of the GDP in their hands.”
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La Trucha · Apr 26, 2015

https://news.vice.com/article/the-o...o-de-janeiros-poorest-citizens-out-of-housing

Emperor Adriano · Apr 26, 2015

La Trucha said: ↑

https://news.vice.com/article/the-o...o-de-janeiros-poorest-citizens-out-of-housing
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Yea been going on for awhile.

Emperor Adriano · Jul 17, 2015

Idk if this is political but it's at least a social question. So my friend from niteroi was telling me she has been hearing gun shots from their apartment which is rare in regards to where she lives. Anyways there is a new favela being "built" on a huge rock and they assume this is the source. Here are some of my questions what's the etiquette for claiming a spot in a favela? Could I just hypothetically role up in there and just start building like some people say you can? How do people in favelas without water supply take showers and cook? Once a favela reaches a certain size is that when rio/municipalities start paving roads and working on sanitation? What do people build these houses out of? Who starts a favela a drug dealer or does it just start organically? How does a place with an extremly competitive real estate market allow a new favela to just "Pop" up? Do low middle class people just ever say fuk it with the cost of living and set up shop in a favela ? I assume a lot of people starting this favela are displaced from other areas in rio but this is fascinating me.

Emperor Adriano · Jul 17, 2015

Also were the favelas any different during the military dictatorship in terms of crime rate and violence?

samuel_clemens · Jul 24, 2015

Mengão86 · Jul 25, 2015

samuel_clemens said: ↑

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Heard about that too. Pathetic.

MerlinRM · Aug 16, 2015

lawsonishere said: ↑

Idk if this is political but it's at least a social question. So my friend from niteroi was telling me she has been hearing gun shots from their apartment which is rare in regards to where she lives. Anyways there is a new favela being "built" on a huge rock and they assume this is the source. Here are some of my questions what's the etiquette for claiming a spot in a favela? Could I just hypothetically role up in there and just start building like some people say you can? How do people in favelas without water supply take showers and cook? Once a favela reaches a certain size is that when rio/municipalities start paving roads and working on sanitation? What do people build these houses out of? Who starts a favela a drug dealer or does it just start organically? How does a place with an extremly competitive real estate market allow a new favela to just "Pop" up? Do low middle class people just ever say fuk it with the cost of living and set up shop in a favela ? I assume a lot of people starting this favela are displaced from other areas in rio but this is fascinating me.
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From what I know about the subject, you pretty much roll up, pick a spot and build. Most of them started stealin electricity and water but I think that after the military takeovers, some favelas were given proper assistance by the government and they have to pay bills now. They build houses with what they can find. I've seen documentaries where they just buy cement and start building with no outside help like construction workers. I don't think the government gives them much help with paving roads and stuff though.

I know some gringos who work with NGOs in favelas in SP and Rio. Most of the favelas dwellers came from the nordeste for work and since the cost of living was too expensive in the city, they just built on the exterior of town. They then have kids who continue on and build there own homes there. I think the difference between Rio and Sao Paulo is that Sao Paulo favelas are almost all on the exterior of the city while Rio is cluttered with them all over.

My cousin's girlfriend was just telling me about the number of favela dwellers rising in her home town(Bento Gonçalves).

Mengão86 · Dec 2, 2015

URGENTE: Eduardo Cunha informa que autorizou processo de impeachment de Dilma https://t.co/TuThR6ItIL pic.twitter.com/anCf4QJuwJ
— g1 (@g1) December 2, 2015

Emperor Adriano · Dec 2, 2015

Mengão86 said: ↑

URGENTE: Eduardo Cunha informa que autorizou processo de impeachment de Dilma https://t.co/TuThR6ItIL pic.twitter.com/anCf4QJuwJ
— g1 (@g1) December 2, 2015

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He has a better shot of another military coupe.

Mengão86 · Dec 2, 2015

In English:

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff will face impeachment proceedings in Congress https://t.co/IYllflxHcQ pic.twitter.com/rdzwj4yzFT
— Bloomberg (@business) December 2, 2015

NotreDameFlamengo · Dec 2, 2015

My whole take on this is pretty simple. If they (Her and Lula) knew all that shit was going down, they deserve to have charges brought up against them also. If they didn't know their own party was stealing billions and driving the whole countries economy into the ground, she deserves to be impeached on the grounds of complete and utter incompetance and gross negligence.

In reality 99.99999% positive Lula robbed Brasil blind and squandered Brasils chances to be a true economic power for years. With Dilma, it's 90% chance she robbed the country blind also, and 10% chance she is a blind puppet used by Lula, and is simpleton like she shows each time she opens her mouth without a script already written for her.

It's absolutely disgusting what PT did to Brasil. Sickening. And yet most people could give a ******** and continue to support them. Of course PSDB and the other parties are no saints, but a FHC type government would never have sank the boat. At least they had a limit to what they took.

Emperor Adriano · Dec 9, 2015

Thoughts? I know some were asking for a "benign" dictatorship

Emperor Adriano · Dec 17, 2015

NotreDameFlamengo said: ↑

My whole take on this is pretty simple. If they (Her and Lula) knew all that shit was going down, they deserve to have charges brought up against them also. If they didn't know their own party was stealing billions and driving the whole countries economy into the ground, she deserves to be impeached on the grounds of complete and utter incompetance and gross negligence.

In reality 99.99999% positive Lula robbed Brasil blind and squandered Brasils chances to be a true economic power for years. With Dilma, it's 90% chance she robbed the country blind also, and 10% chance she is a blind puppet used by Lula, and is simpleton like she shows each time she opens her mouth without a script already written for her.

It's absolutely disgusting what PT did to Brasil. Sickening. And yet most people could give a ******** and continue to support them. Of course PSDB and the other parties are no saints, but a FHC type government would never have sank the boat. At least they had a limit to what they took.
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Who are the alternatives to support? I've done my reading on Cunha and Aecio and they are pretty disgraceful people. Yea I wanted people to support Aecio but it was only due to the fact foreign investors/bankers would favor him. It was clear to us Dilma was bad for the economy but if Aecio was elected I see Brazil having similar issues. Why would a poor person in Recife or Rio vote for Aecio? Just because "on paper" the economy would be better doesn't mean any improvement would translate for an average brazilians life. . The same people regardless are skimming money off the top, like we mentioned before it's a nightmare supporting a family there. I mostly agree with you though. Maybe Brazilians will wake up once the unemployment benefits run out but i'm not seeing how you fix their issues without a RADICAL change. Also democracy really isn't valued in brazil. As someone who is a pragmatist it's hard for me to see a democratic solution.

Emperor Adriano · Dec 17, 2015

I can't stand Dilma so in no way am I defending her. We can all say we predicted this but I take no joy in how people are going to start suffering.

PMLF · Dec 22, 2015

lawsonishere said: ↑

Thoughts? I know some were asking for a "benign" dictatorship
View attachment 61776
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I think it's a cool idea for a party and I doubt they would try to install a dictatorship, and since they aren't left-wing, we can be sure they would do a better job than PT and PSDB.

Unfortunately no chance they ever grow much as propaganda here hates the military.

This party is cool too (if you sympathize with the monarchy, at least): http://www.real.org.br/

NotreDameFlamengo · Jan 6, 2016

lawsonishere said: ↑

Who are the alternatives to support? I've done my reading on Cunha and Aecio and they are pretty disgraceful people. Yea I wanted people to support Aecio but it was only due to the fact foreign investors/bankers would favor him. It was clear to us Dilma was bad for the economy but if Aecio was elected I see Brazil having similar issues. Why would a poor person in Recife or Rio vote for Aecio? Just because "on paper" the economy would be better doesn't mean any improvement would translate for an average brazilians life. . The same people regardless are skimming money off the top, like we mentioned before it's a nightmare supporting a family there. I mostly agree with you though. Maybe Brazilians will wake up once the unemployment benefits run out but i'm not seeing how you fix their issues without a RADICAL change. Also democracy really isn't valued in brazil. As someone who is a pragmatist it's hard for me to see a democratic solution.
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There is no simple answer. Politics has turned into a club or machine in Brasil in that its impossible to rise in the system without being dirty. The others won't trust you unless you're in on the dirt with them. I have no easy answers. the political corruption in Brasil is so engrained it will take decades of radical change to make any progress. What doesn't help is the size and diversity of Brasil. It is hard enough to change this shit in SP and Rio, but possible. What gets impossible to change decades of empty and false socialism in the neglected parts. This false socialism of making the population dependent on handouts and keeping them uneducated is the worst form of government there is for a nation and is not easy to fix.

samuel_clemens · Jan 27, 2016

lawsonishere said: ↑

Who are the alternatives to support? I've done my reading on Cunha and Aecio and they are pretty disgraceful people. Yea I wanted people to support Aecio but it was only due to the fact foreign investors/bankers would favor him. It was clear to us Dilma was bad for the economy but if Aecio was elected I see Brazil having similar issues. Why would a poor person in Recife or Rio vote for Aecio? Just because "on paper" the economy would be better doesn't mean any improvement would translate for an average brazilians life. . The same people regardless are skimming money off the top, like we mentioned before it's a nightmare supporting a family there. I mostly agree with you though. Maybe Brazilians will wake up once the unemployment benefits run out but i'm not seeing how you fix their issues without a RADICAL change. Also democracy really isn't valued in brazil. As someone who is a pragmatist it's hard for me to see a democratic solution.
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The differences are deeper than just economic policy. Did you know for example that Dilma is trying to phase out European history from school curriculum? The proposal they unveiled for 2016 focused on Brazilan and African history, as well as Cuban and Mexican revolutions. While Renaissance and the age of discovery would get cliffnote mentions.
"
No currículo de História, a principal falha do texto elaborado por uma comissão de professores universitários, de acordo com estudiosos, é a ausência ou a pouca ênfase na História europeia, que inclui temas importantes como o estudo da Grécia e da Roma antiga, além das Revoluções Francesa e Industrial, contrapondo-se a um vasto conteúdo de História do Brasil e da África, assinalando a importância de determinados povos, como indígenas e escravos.

HISTORIADORES VEEM VIÉS IDEOLÓGICO

A configuração do conteúdo levou historiadores a apontarem um suposto viés ideológico de esquerda na Base Curricular. Hoje, a presidente da Associação Nacional dos Professores e Pesquisadores de História (Anpuh), Maria Helena Capelato, se reunirá com o MEC para pedir prazo maior para a consulta pública, que termina em 15 de março.

— Em alguns pontos, a proposta aparece muito detalhada, nas revoluções Cubana ou Mexicana, por exemplo. Em outros, como o Renascimento ou as Navegações, as menções são raras e vagas. É ótimo fazermos a crítica do eurocentrismo, mas não se pode deixar de fora aqueles que estão sendo criticados. Da mesma forma, concordamos com a inclusão de povos que são relegados no ensino, como os índios, os Incas — afirma Maria Capelato.

"

http://www.dm.com.br/cotidiano/2016/01/mec-ja-admite-mudar-texto-do-novo-curriculo-da-educacao.html

PT is totally onboard with Eurocide.

MerlinRM · Mar 28, 2016

PMDB likely breaking away from Dilma and Co tomorrow.

Its been nice Dilminha. Don't let the door hit you on the way out

MerlinRM · May 18, 2016

Zé Dirceu sentenced 23 years for his role in Lava Jato .

samuel_clemens · May 18, 2016

Looking pretty good so far, but I say, may we never be content. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance as the saying goes.

MerlinRM · May 30, 2016

New Dilma interview. This woman was actually voted president not once but twice of the largest country in South America and (former thanks to her)6th largest economy of the world. Incredible really but then you remember a self-proclaimed illiterate was her predecessor also having been voted in twice by the majority .

http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/...r-o-pato-do-pato-diz-dilma-sobre-cortes.shtml

PMLF · Jun 11, 2016

Yes, Lula and Dilma are disgraceful. Hopefully neither of them nor their political party (PT) will ever rule again.

Temer may not be perfect (far from it) but so far he has been looking far more a proper president than Lula & Dilma ever were.

Emperor Adriano · May 25, 2018

Is there a chance now??????????

Century's Best · Oct 9, 2018

Jair Messias Bolsonaro. 28 de Outubro de 2018 – 38o. Presidente da República Federativa do Brasil.

Assino embaixo.