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Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment

theguardian.com

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Re: Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment

#11

Post by rbanffy »

hudell wrote: post #2

This protest got a lot of people with different opinions together. As ridiculous as it sounds, some of them even want the military back in power. Some people had swastikas drawn on their flags. Some others just want someone else on power. All they have in common is their hate for the current president's party, who won the last election with roughly 52% of votes.

Also worth mentioning, the vice-president and the presiding officers of both legislative houses come from a party that's deeply involved in almost all corruption scandals in recent (post dictatorship) history.

This protest was organized by the Vem Pra Rua group (vemprarua.org.br) which is backed by Fundação Estudar, which, in turn, is backed by Jorge Paulo Lemann, one of, if not the, richest Brazilian citizen, and the Movimento Brazil Livre, which is backed by the Koch brothers.

Re: Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment

#12

Post by victor22 »

The current party has been in the power for too long (Lula 2x 4 years, Dilma currently on her 2nd 4-year period). Petrobras, the largest company in the country is government-owned and run and lost 80% of it's value in the past 5 years due to corruption. The Brazilian Real devaluated 60% in 2 years. People have all the right to be pissed off. The biggest problem here is that the opposition is also very corrupt, so people are not protesting in favor of someone, but just against Roussef. Though situation.

Re: Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment

#13

Post by dguaraglia »

rbanffy wrote: post #10
martinrame wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW, Brazil has a population of 200million, and this protest's had at most 1 million people. This isn't as representative of people's toughts as right hand media tries to show.

If you live in the South and Southeast, you probably have seen some declining living standards for middle-class families. That is mostly offset by substantial improvements in the rest of the country. Still, it's funny to call this the "Protest of the 0.5%"

I lived in the South (Santa Catarina) from 2003~2011. I don't know what the situation has been since, but while I lived there the living standard of people in the Southern states went up by a lot. Working class families suddenly had access to buying cars, flying both internally and abroad, and a bunch of other changes. Most of them were driven by the incredible industrial growth at the time, but the supposedly incompetent government of Lula did a great job of keeping the country's economy under control while countries like Argentina (where I grew up) went through the typical boom/bust cycle of fast-growing economies.

So yeah, this sounds to me like the grumblings of the typical political discontents who would credit Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the PSDB for anything good that happened in the country, even after 8 years of PT presidency.

Re: Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment

#14

Post by dashoffset »

martinrame wrote: post #4
hudell wrote: post #2

This protest got a lot of people with different opinions together. As ridiculous as it sounds, some of them even want the military back in power. Some people had swastikas drawn on their flags. Some others just want someone else on power. All they have in common is their hate for the current president's party, who won the last election with roughly 52% of votes.

BTW, Brazil has a population of 200million, and this protest's had at most 1 million people. This isn't as representative of people's toughts as right hand media tries to show.

1 million people in one city (Sao Paulo). Most capitals (including Brasilia) had protests as well.

Re: Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment

#15

Post by dashoffset »

victor22 wrote: post #12

The current party has been in the power for too long (Lula 2x 4 years, Dilma currently on her 2nd 4-year period). Petrobras, the largest company in the country is government-owned and run and lost 80% of it's value in the past 5 years due to corruption. The Brazilian Real devaluated 60% in 2 years. People have all the right to be pissed off. The biggest problem here is that the opposition is also very corrupt, so peo…

> The biggest problem here is that the opposition is also very corrupt

Also, both situation and opposition have a very similar agenda.

Re: Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment

#16

Post by sanoli »

dguaraglia wrote: post #13
rbanffy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in the South and Southeast, you probably have seen some declining living standards for middle-class families. That is mostly offset by substantial improvements in the rest of the country. Still, it's funny to call this the "Protest of the 0.5%"

I lived in the South (Santa Catarina) from 2003~2011. I don't know what the situation has been since, but while I lived there the living standard of people in the Southern states went up by a lot . Working class families suddenly had access to buying cars, flying both internally and abroad, and a bunch of other changes. Most of them were driven by the incredible industrial growth at the time, but the supposedly incom…

The thing is, the major structural changes that brought more wealth and better living conditions to the poor really were made by Fernando Henrique Cardoso (I don't vote for PSDB, btw). What Lula did was mostly broaden the welfare spending. Oh, and the other thing were these one or two huge corruption that made the previous government's corruption pale in comparison.

Re: Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment

#17

Post by hudell »

dashoffset wrote: post #14
martinrame wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW, Brazil has a population of 200million, and this protest's had at most 1 million people. This isn't as representative of people's toughts as right hand media tries to show.

1 million people in one city (Sao Paulo). Most capitals (including Brasilia) had protests as well.

It was calculated to around half a million counting all cities. The "1 million people in Sao Paulo" was an estimate that was soon proved false.

Re: Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment

#18

Post by andrenth »

rbanffy wrote: post #11
hudell wrote: post #2

This protest got a lot of people with different opinions together. As ridiculous as it sounds, some of them even want the military back in power. Some people had swastikas drawn on their flags. Some others just want someone else on power. All they have in common is their hate for the current president's party, who won the last election with roughly 52% of votes.

Also worth mentioning, the vice-president and the presiding officers of both legislative houses come from a party that's deeply involved in almost all corruption scandals in recent (post dictatorship) history. This protest was organized by the Vem Pra Rua group (vemprarua.org.br) which is backed by Fundação Estudar, which, in turn, is backed by Jorge Paulo Lemann, one of, if not the, richest Brazilian citizen, and th…

I fail to see why any of this is relevant. The vice-president's party has been involved in corruption, so we should ignore the president and her party's own involvement in the biggest corruption scandals in the history of the country?

One of the organizers of the protests (definitely not the only one) is backed by a rich guy. So what? Does that make the claims of millions of Brazilians invalid? Are we all "the white elite"?

Re: Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment

#19

Post by andrenth »

dguaraglia wrote: post #8
martinrame wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW, Brazil has a population of 200million, and this protest's had at most 1 million people. This isn't as representative of people's toughts as right hand media tries to show.

This is the only comment that rings true to me. I lived in Brazil for 7 years, and yes, people were unhappy with Lula before they were unhappy about Dilma Roussef. But overall, poor people (which is a substantial part of the population) were happy with their governments. On the other hand, most people I knew voted for Lula and Dilma because they actually benefitted from their policies. When Lula left power his approv…

People are not happy here. The current president has taken unorthodox economic measures whose results we are now seeing. Electricity is up around 60% since last december due to the failure of the president's populist policies of controlling prices. Same for fuel, because Petrobras wasn't allowed to raise its prices, kept artificially low by the government in an attempt to control inflation.

The president was reelected on a campaign of lies, and is now doing what she accused and claimed her opponents would do, in one of the greatest cases of electoral embezzlement ever seen.

No, people are not happy with this government, and no, it's not only the rich.

Re: Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment

#20

Post by andrenth »

hudell wrote: post #17
dashoffset wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 million people in one city (Sao Paulo). Most capitals (including Brasilia) had protests as well.

It was calculated to around half a million counting all cities. The "1 million people in Sao Paulo" was an estimate that was soon proved false.

Official numbers (calculated by the police) say more than 2 million country-wide. I don't see anyone claiming "1 million people in São Paulo" to be false, except government-sponsored media.
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