On the impeachment of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff

I have been somewhat following but am generally ignorant on the intricacies. I'll be a listener for a while.

To get us started off I'll elaborate on my position a bit.

I am in favor of the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, even though I'm sympathetic to the criticisms that she is the scapegoat of the economic decline in Brazil (that is largely a crash in the commodities market) and the incredible car wash scandal where over 5 billion was paid to corrupt politicians .

Many on the left accuse this of being a coup, and point out that many of the politicians voting for her impeachment are themselves under investigation for far greater wrongdoing than Dilma is being accused of. There are also legitimate accusations of misogyny against her and classism, as the workers party has never been accepted by the upper classes and extreme partisanship has always existed against them.

They may point out that the things Dilma is being accused of (irregular budgets where monies were borrowed from state banks to cover budget gaps in order to secure reelection) are things previous governments did with impunity and were not considered illegal.

Despite her crime being minor in comparison to the systemic corruption being unearthed across Brazilian politics I believe that her action was illegal (and that others doing it with impunity is not a legitimate precedent or excuse).

This has deeply divided me and many of my Brazilian friends so I hope we can discuss this agreeably even if we do not agree.

I was hoping to get some news in detail from you on that matter. As a Portuguese Brazilian polithics is important for me. Yet I can't make heads or tails on the Dilma problem. Fell free to brings up to speed. Ty RG.

Disregard my previous, I hadn't read your 2 post...I agree with your position. A turn for the better should be made after Dilma and cleaning the house should follow...I just don't know if Brazil is ready for that right now...if it is to soon then perhaps Dilma should be left alone. Botton line if this is an isolated case it might weaken the State authority instead of bettering the system.

I've been semi-following this along with what has happened with Lula (Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva), Rouseff's predecessor.

It's all somewhat interesting but truly there's not much for me to add at present.

I am also curious as to whether this will cast a pall over the upcoming Olympic games (as if the Zika virus wasn't enough).


Will keep following for info and updates.

following as well

it's getting a fair bit of coverage in Canada - but secondary to Olympics/Zika

I'm also interested in Lula. I read about him a lot a few or more years ago, but haven't followed up. <back to just listening>

I think it's good that a president is being removed from office by judicial process rather than a military coup. The fear is, as always, that the Americans are behind all this. If her trial is flawed in any way, there will a lot of dissent.

I think she might even come out of this looking better than ever.

I hope she beats the rap. The charges seem rinky-dink, other Brazilian leaders seem to have done the same thing with no charges brought, she appears to be a good deal less crooked than most of the hounds baying at her heels, and until the oil price crash the country was doing great. (She took office in 2006).



Keep her.

Other Brazilian leaders doing so with impunity doesn't do much for me, given how corrupt Brazilian politicians have tended to be. Do you think what she is accused of (which she admits to, but merely points to the impunity of those who came before her, though the scale at which she did so is reportedly much larger) is something that is illegal or not?

Quote Robert Gentel:

In a country where you have to be a crook to be president, it makes sense to keep the most effective crook. The next guy will probably be worse.

I disagree and think that this is the kind of thinking that leads to the systemic corruption Brazil has. Brazilians love to complain about corruption till its one of their guys doing it.

The only way Brazil is going to become less corrupt is to reject corruption, full stop. Nothing should matter except whether they are guilty or not. There will always be plenty of pretexts to excuse corruption.

Lastly, you are crediting Dilma mainly for a bubble in commodities. Correlation does not imply causation but you routinely hold up a number that correlates with a politician's time to give them entirely too much credit. The groundwork for Brazil's economic growth was laid by Lula's predecessor FHC whose introduction of the Real currency and its associated fiscal policy (including the cessation of the practice of adjusting savings accounts to account for, and subsequently cause, inflation) stabilized the country by ending the hyperinflation that had us crossing zeros off the bank notes periodically and dealing with prices that would go up throughout the course of the day. The Worker's Party that Lula and Dilma are a part of deserve credit for social programs that helped lift millions of Brazilians out of poverty but they do not deserve credit for Brazil's general economic performance, that is just not something that presidents of any country have much control over and as we can now see it was largely just a commodities bubble that temporarily lifted Brazil into BRIC status. Just as the fall in the commodities prices has nothing to do with Dilma the rise in the prices did not either.

I don't actually expect a turn for the better. Brazil has problems that this will not solve and her replacement is more corrupt than she was.

I'll start another thread sometime on Brazil's overall predicament but Dilma's impeachment is unlikely to lead to any short-term good news. The only good thing about it is that Brazilians are emboldened by this, their young democracy has little history of them taking to the street and getting anything accomplished and most accept corruption as inevitable.

The only silver lining to this I see is the possibility that Brazilians have less apathy toward corruption and begin to demand better of their leaders. But that will take time, many of the people who voted for her impeachment are themselves under investigation for much more serious charges of corruption.

This is the least-heralded summer Olympics I have ever seen. It's about to happen but isn't being talked about enough for most to even remember or be aware of.

There is little to no concern among the Brazilian public that the US is behind this. The coup that Dilma supporters allege is of an internal partisan nature.

Quote Robert Gentel:


Maybe yes, maybe no. But you can be sure the pol's opponents are going to try to pin all the bad stuff on him/her, so by all rights they get credit for the good stuff.

Sure, but just because people make dumb arguments like that is no reason to counter with more of the same. Politicians get too much credit and blame for economic events that have nothing to do with them.

Sometimes it works that way, but not all the time. People are still trying to say Roosevelt needed WWII to the country out of The Great Depression, but it was actually out by the time Pearl Harbor was bombed.

I have fear for it re the readiness, construction stuff not getting done, things going wrong, athletes deciding not to go, visitors deciding not to go. Mosquito fear.

I've a childhood love of hearing about Brazil, and wish them well. I've read some as an adult, but I don't have a photo brain re details I read. And so what, just I'll try to keep up.