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DilmaRousseffandtheChronicDysfunctionofBrazilsPoliticsTheNewYorker

NEWS DESK

DILMA ROUSSEFF AND THE CHRONIC

DYSFUNCTION OF BRAZILS POLITICS
ByAlexCuadros,MAY17,2016

Widespread anger over corruption helped to bring about Rousse s downfall, but in getting rid of her the
Congress has swapped one President tainted by scandal for another.

arly last Thursday morning, after Brazils senators voted to begin an

impeachment trial against President Dilma Rousse, fireworks crackled
in cities around the country. Rousse was out at last. During her five and a half
years in oce, she had presided over the countrys deepest recession since the
nineteen-thirties, and had been caught in the middle of a giant corruption
scandal. Thursdays vote forced her to step down for the duration of the
impeachment trial, and no one expects her to return to power. But by the
standards of the recent mass protests against Rousse, Thursdays celebrations
were muted. In Braslia, the capital, a news photographers lens captured a
plume of smoke from fireworks rising above the vast lawn of the Esplanade of
Ministries, near the National Congress building, where a small group of
demonstrators had gathered. Most Brazilians had wanted to see Rousse go
but now they had to worry about what comes next.
Brazilian politics suers from chronic dysfunction. More than two dozen
political parties hold seats in Congress, and because most of them lack a
recognizable ideology governing coalitions are stitched together through
patronagea ministry here, a state bank there. This system explains how

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patronagea ministry here, a state bank there. This system explains how
Rousse originally came to team up with Michel Temer, her Vice-President,
who is now Brazils acting President. Temer was not a member of Rousse s
Workers Party, and never bought into its declared aims of social justice. A
lawyer and career politician, Temer was a member of the old political
establishment, and Rousse relied on his skills as a power broker to help her
projects get through the legislature. But when public opinion turned against
her, so did he. In recent months, he had been openly plotting to take her place.
For more than a decade, Brazil, a deeply unequal society, has been governed by
leaders who claim to speak for the poor. Temer represents a break from that
approach. At seventy-five, he has sunken cheeks, wears his gray hair slicked
back, and speaks a stilted Portuguese associated with the old, urban upper
class. A political rival once compared him to a butler from a horror movie.
On Thursday afternoon, when he made his first televised Presidential address,
he promised to deliver national salvation and announced a plan to put up
millions of billboards around the country that read Dont speak of crisis;
work! His voice caught twice during his remarks. When he paused to take a
sip from a glass of water, his lips curled into an awkward smile.
Widespread anger over corruption helped to bring about Rousse s downfall.
But, in getting rid of her, the Congress has swapped one President tainted by
scandal for another. Temer leads the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party,
which, like the Workers Party, has been implicated in the petrolo (or big oil)
scandal that saw billions of dollars funnelled from the state oil company to othe-books campaign coers and Swiss bank accounts. And while Rousse is
not suspected of direct involvement in the scheme, Temer isas are several of
his newly appointed cabinet ministers.
Many Brazilians wanted Rousse out, but they werent calling for Temer.
Surveys show that just two per cent of Brazilians would vote for him for
President, and that sixty per cent want to see him impeached, too. So far,
though, few outside Rousse s base on the left have made any public show of
disapproval. Some Brazilians are tempted to blame the countrys age-old
corruption problems on the Workers Party alone, and many others, after a

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corruption problems on the Workers Party alone, and many others, after a
period of bitter political polarization, are simply tired, and have given up on
politics altogether. A few small but vocal groups have even called for the
military to take over and rule, as it did from 1964 to 1985.
Like many of her supporters, Rousse considers her impeachment a coup
masquerading as legislative procedure. She has made allusions to the military
dictatorship, during which she was imprisoned and tortured for her role in an
urban guerrilla group. Her rhetoric hasnt helped her case, but theres no
question that the impeachment process has been essentially political, more
about her record as a leader than about the technical issue at hand: whether
she committed a crime of responsibility when she authorized spending
without congressional permission.
The more urgent issue now, though, concerns Temers rise to power. His path
to the Presidency may have followed the letter of the law, but he was not
directly elected, and he has made few gestures toward representative
government. In a country where more than half the population is black or
mixed race, his new cabinet is all white and all male. Three of his new
ministers are the sons of regional political bosses. Many worry that he might
undercut the countrys recent advances against political corruption and graft.
But the empresariadothe business classlikes Temer. He has promised to
stabilize the economy without asking the wealthy to carry more of the tax
burden. To close a gaping budget deficit, he has proposed amending the
constitution so that the government is allowed to spend less on health care and
education. His advisers have even spoken of limiting the scope of Bolsa
Famlia, the welfare program that pays fourteen million families a dollar or two
a day if they send their kids to school. These proposals are far more radical
than any put forward by Rousse s conservative opponent during the 2014
election.
A majority of Brazilians want a bigger say in the future course of their country.
The country should have the chance to choose its President, Robrio da
Costa Oliveira, a thirty-one-year-old shipping-company employee, told me
last month, at an anti-Rousse rally in So Paulo. His dream candidate was

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last month, at an anti-Rousse rally in So Paulo. His dream candidate was

Joaquim Barbosa, an Afro-Brazilian who grew up poor and went on to serve as
chief justice of the Supreme Court, where he presided over a groundbreaking
corruption case against the Workers Party. But new elections would require
Temer to resign, or be impeached himself. And with the political class now
coalescing around him, both scenarios look unlikely: unless those who marched
against Rousse take to the streets again, Temer may be here to stay. Three
decades after the military ceded power to a civilian government, Brazils latest
experiment with democracy is facing yet another identity crisis.
Alex Cuadros is the author of Brazillionaires: Wealth, Power, Decadence, and Hope in an
American Country, forthcoming in July from Spiegel & Grau.

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