Protests Continue in Brazil Against Dilma Rousseff

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Protests Continue in Brazil Against Dilma Rousseff

9:16 CAT | 14 Dec 2015

New York Times / Demonstrators against President Dilma Rousseff, who has three years to go in her term, sang the national anthem in Brasília.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets again across Brazil on Sunday to demand the ouster of President Dilma Rousseff, who faces impeachment proceedings that could drag on for months while her government struggles to lift the economy from its most severe crisis in decades.

The protests appeared to be smaller than earlier demonstrations calling for her ouster, perhaps offering some comfort to the beleaguered president. Even so, the vitriol expressed by many protesters, including calls by some for the armed forces to remove Ms. Rousseff, reflect the increasing polarization in the country that is making it harder for her to govern.

“We need a military coup,” said Sonia Alves Brito, 67, a teacher at a day care who joined a march through the seaside district of Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro. “Brazil was better off during the military dictatorship.”

That protesters are publicly voicing such views, which would have been taboo a year ago, illustrates how fed up many Brazilians are with the graft scandals and economic mismanagement that have characterized Ms. Rousseff’s leftist government, even to the point of feeling nostalgic for the period of military rule from 1964 to 1985, when the economy was mangled by hyperinflation and human rights abuses were widespread.

Few political analysts believe the Brazilian military could intervene now the way it once did. But Ms. Rousseff and her supporters describe the impeachment efforts as the equivalent of a coup, as they maneuver to keep the president in office for the remaining three years of her four-year term.

The proceedings were initiated by Eduardo Cunha, the scandal-plagued speaker of the lower house of Congress, who is trying to keep from being ousted himself. He based his decision on a ruling by an auditing tribunal, which found that Ms. Rousseff improperly used funds from public banks to cover budget shortfalls. In contrast with the accusations against Mr. Cunha and other political figures under investigation, Ms. Rousseff has not been accused of enriching herself in any graft scheme.

“Impeachment is not always a legitimate instrument for ousting a leader,” Jaques Wagner, Ms. Rousseff’s chief of staff, said on Twitter over the weekend. “What you have is a coup when it’s transformed into an exclusively political process.”

Many of the protesters on Sunday clearly take a different view, expressing their ire against Ms. Rousseff.

“Her brain is too small for what’s needed to govern this country,” said Alberto Cerqueira Lima, 72, a marketing consultant who was among the protesters.

The demonstrations were noticeably smaller than those earlier in the year, but other factors reflect how Ms. Rousseff’s presidency has reached a low ebb.

For instance, business leaders like Roberto Setúbal, a powerful banker, declared just a few months ago, after the last round of protests, that they did not see grounds to impeach Ms. Rousseff and called for restraint in Brasília, the capital.

But with the economy still sputtering and the impeachment proceedings grinding slowly ahead, such declarations are not as common now. Paulo Skaf, the president of São Paulo’s influential Federation of Industries, told the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo in an interview published on Sunday that “business leaders and the productive sectors massively want change.”

Going further, Mr. Skaf dismissed talk that the movement to oust Ms. Rousseff amounted to a coup. “Legal avenues exist for the impeachment option,” he said.

Many Brazilians are expressing disgust with the entire political establishment, which seems to be more urgently interested in arguing over impeachment and the presidency than in finding solutions for the country’s many problems, from the weak economy to a surge in mosquito-borne viral illnesses.

“I don’t believe in our political parties,” said Adriana Sena Ribeiro, 31, a lawyer at the protest in São Paulo. “They’re all flour from the same bag.”

Source: New York Times