The Great Brazil Topic

[buritobr]

Today, after one month of Temer's administration, the first opinion poll was published

Your view on Temer's administration
11.3% positive
30.2% regular
28.0% negative
30.5% don't know

Do you approve Temer's administration?
33.8% approve
40.4% disapprove

Temer's administration is
54.8% equal to Dilma's
20.1% better than Dilma's
14.9% worse than Dilma's

The corruption in Temer's administration will be
46.6% equal than it was in the Dilma's administration
28.3% smaller
18.6% bigger

Was Dilma's impeachment a correct decision?
62.4% yes
33.0% no

Should a new election take place in 2016?
50.3% yes
46.1% no


These numbers are not bad for Michel Temer. Pro-Temer brainwashing made by Globo Network is working...

[buritobr]

Another opinion poll
Ibope 24-27th June, 2016

Evaluation of Temer's administration
13% good/very good
36% regular
39% bad/very bad

Approval
31% approve
53% disapprove

[buritobr]

Eduardo Cunha resigned today. He is not the president of the House anymore. But he is still a representative. Maybe, there was an agreement with his allies so that he could resign without losing his term as a representative.
Eduardo Cunha met Michel Temer in Temer's office last week.

[RodPresident]

Eduardo Cunha resigned today. He is not the president of the House anymore. But he is still a representative. Maybe, there was an agreement with his allies so that he could resign without losing his term as a representative.
Eduardo Cunha met Michel Temer in Temer's office last week.

He's a removed representative. Things for Cunha are very complicated. His main bribe operator, Lucio Bolonha Funaro, was arrested after a bargain plea by Flavio Cleto, former Vice President of Caixa. Cunha was appointed as receiver of 80% of bribes. But a delation of Cunha is very feared by usurper acting government. Now Cunha is under juridisction of 2nd Group of Federal Supreme Court, led by Gilmar Mendes, a very pro-PSDB partisan judge, who makes a pact to save Cunha very likely.

[buritobr]

Dilma Rousseff was invited to the Olympics Opening Cerimony. Officially, she is still the president. The former presidents will be invited too. I don't know if she will attend or not. It would be a contest against Michel Temer for the worst answer of the audience. Considering the social class of the audience, due to the prices of the tickets, problably the audience would be more hostile to Dilma Rousseff than to Michel Temer.

[buritobr]

For non-Brazilians who follow this thread:

They could ask: how could a vice president be so different of a president? How could the government become opposition and the opposition become government after an impeachment?

Well, Brazilian Congress has more than 20 parties, due to the open list proportional representation system. No party has more than 20% of the seats. Every president needs more than 50% of support in order to approve new laws. So, it is necessary to build coalitions.
Brazil has a presidential system, like most of the countries in the American Continent. Elections for president and for the Congress are held at the same time, but they are independent one from each other. There is a split in the vote for president and for the Congress. The Workers Party (PT) had a lock in the "Palácio do Planalto". The right has a lock in the Congress. Lula was elected in 2002 and 2006. Dilma was elected in 2010 and in 2014. But the PT never had more than 20% of the seats of the Congress. The sum of the leftist parties, PT, Communist Party (PCdoB), Party of the Socialism and Liberty (PSOL) and Democratic Labor Party (PDT), never reached more than 25% of the seats (besides, PSOL was the "let wing opposition"). So, Lula and Dilma needed the support of center-right parties in order to have a majority.
There are two kind of center-right parties: the ideology driven parties and the oligarchs' parties. The ideology driven center-right parties are PSDB and DEM. They were always opposition against Lula and Dilma. Most of the PSDB/DEM voters belong to the urban middle/upper class. The oligarchs' parties are PMDB, PP, PSD, PRB, PR and PRB. They are called "centrão" (big center), because they also endorse governments, no matter if the head of the executive branch belongs to the PT or to the PMDB. Most of the voters of the "centrão" parties are the rural poor.

Mexicans will understand in an easier way: PT is like the PRD, PSDB is like the PAN and PMDB is like the PRI

Lula and Dilma needed the support of the parties of the "centrão" in order to build a coalition. But this support has a cost. In 2010, PMDB accepted to support Dilma only if this party was able to nominate Dilma's VP. And then, PMDB chose Michel Temer. The Dilma Rousseff/Michel Temer ticket was repeated in 2014. PT had another gain in accepting PMDB nominating the VP. In Brazilian elections, time for advertising at the television is allocated according to the proportion of the seats each candidate's party has in the Congress. Since PMDB has the biggest number of tickets, by accepting the PMDB nominating the VP, PT earned more time for advertising for Dilma at the television. In the other side, PMDB could nominate some ministers in Lula/Dilma administration.
Well, the coalition PT/PMDB was not very clean. They deviated 5% of the payments from the state owned oil cimpany to building contractors in order to use in the election campaigns. Many PT and PMDB politicians were benefited.

Part of the Petrobras scandal was dicovered by the Federal Police before the 2014 elections, but most of the scandal was discovered after the elections. Dilma won a narrow runoff against PSDB candidate Aécio Neves. But PT lost seats in the legislative election. Dilma's supporting base became smaller.
Besides the Petrobras scandal, there was the economic crisis. That's why, Dilma's approval rate soon after the new innauguration fell to the single digit. Then, the parties of the "centrão", including PMDB, stopped supporting Dilma's admistration. They joined the opposition parties PSDB and DEM and had together more than 2/3 of the seats, enough to aprove Dilma's impeachment.
Michel Temer became the temporary president after the Chamber approved the impeachment. Now, the Senate is discussing the impeachment. The final vote will take place soon after the Olympics. Problably, more than 2/3 of the senators will vote for the impeachment, and Michel Temer will become the president until December 2018.
Dilma lost the presidency because she lost people's support and because she lost the support of the Congress. But according to Brazilian constitution, the Congress cannot remove a president, unless the president has committed a crime. So, the Congress needed to find a crime that Dilma committed. There was no proof of the direct participation of Dilma Rousseff in the Petrobras scandal. So, they found another "crime": mismanagement of the budget, a "crime" that most of the previous presidents and state governos committed. It was an excuse to impeach a president that lost the support of the Congress.
Michel Temer became the temporary president, invited some PSDB and DEM politicians to become ministers and is implementing policies that Aécio Neves would implemente if he had won the election. That's why the PT supporters consider Dilma's impeachment a "coup d'stat".
Big street demonstrations helped the impeachment. Many middle/upper class people, who voted for Aécio Neves in 2014, went to the streets, wearing yellow shirts, asking "Dilma out". The "libertarian" movement was there. Former Dilma's voters didn't go to the pro-impeachment demonstrations, but most of them didn't go to the anti-impeachment demonstrations too. The anti-impeachment demonstrations were much smaller than the pro-impeachment demonstrations. Most of the Dilma's voters became dissapointed with her. They didn't join the ones who wanted to remove her from the Palácio do Planalto. But they didn't make effort to hold her there.
The pro-impeachment movement was very hypocrite. They used "send the corrupt back home" slogans in order to criticize PT for the Petrobras scandal. But they accept a PMDB administration, a party that participated in the Petrobras scandal too. The difference is not related to corruption: PMDB accepts to implement the agenda that the pro-impeachment movement supports, and the PT no.

The business sector supported the impeachment because it considered that Michel Temer would implemente policies that would be very unpopular during elections: increase the flexibility of the labor markets, reduce the taxes (by reducing the spending in education and health) and increase the minimum age for retirement. A non-elected government could implemente these policies easier.

[Seneca]

Thanks for the run-down buritobr.

I am curious how likely it is that Temer faces any legal trouble as a result of the ongoing investigation. I imagine he wouldn't be impeached, given the support he has in congress, but could he be indicted by the courts?

[buritobr]

If someone in the audience shows messages like "Fora Temer" (Temer out) inside the venues of the Olympics, the police is removing.
There were cases of people who had to leave the stadiums.

... democracy!

[RodPresident]

Today, Coup's Trial was started by Senate, presided by President of Supreme Court Ricardo Lewandowsky. Audit's Court Prosecutor Julio Marcelo, one of main accusers of President Dilma Rousseff, was refused as witness, because his positions for rejection of Dilma's govermnent accounts. He was accepted only as informant, unable to produce proofs against Rousseff.
And Car Wash are receiving attacks from pro-PSDB members of Judiciary after a leak of OAS (building company) about a household renovation of Federal Supreme Court Minister Dias Toffoli (Lula's appointee but that became aligned with Gilmar Mendes, most anti-PT Supreme Court minister).

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Proposal: bring General João Figueiredo back to life and install him as President.

[buritobr]

Since the end of Figueiredo's term in 1985, Michel Temer is the most right-wing president. He is on the right of José Sarney, Fernando Collor, Itamar Franco, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff.

[buritobr]

Dilma Rousseff is answering the questions of the senators. The final vote will take place tomorrow or Wednesday.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

What is Collor stance on this? (given how his own administration ended.)

[RogueBeaver]

She's been impeached, 61-20.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Hopefully the people will stand with the PT and send the golpistas home in 2018.

[Tender Branson]

She's been impeached, 61-20.

Good.

That woman was a real plague for the country, and an incompetent one too.

Hopefully the Maduro-clown in Venezuela follows suit in being ousted from office.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Another parliamentary coup succeeding in Latin America...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This whole saga made me hate Temer. That piece of human scum.
Hopefully his party pays the price in 2018.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Someone used this on AH.com in response to someone calling this a "A good day for Brazil".

[Lumine]

Good.

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

She's been impeached, 61-20.

Good.

That woman was a real plague for the country, and an incompetent one too.

Hopefully the Maduro-clown in Venezuela follows suit in being ousted from office.

You're aware that Temer is a lot more corrupt than Lula or Dilma, and almost every minister is extremely corrupt ?

[buritobr]

There were anti-Temer demonstrations in many state capitals this evening. Most of them were peaceful. In São Paulo, there were some clashes with the riot police.

Here are the pictures I have taken from the demonstration downtown Rio de Janeiro
http://www.trincheiras.com.br/2016/08/fotos-da-manifestacao-anti-temer-no-centro-do-rio-de-janeiro/

[Famous Mortimer]

What is Collor stance on this? (given how his own administration ended.)

Collor voted to remove from office.

Meanwhile, Senator Lindbergh Farias of the PT, who led the movement to impeach Collor as leader of the national student union in the 80s, voted not to impeach. A lot of people are noting the irony.

Also interesting about Collor, he's switched parties again. He's in the Christian Labor Party, which is actually organizationally descended from the party he led when he was president. He was previously a member of the Brazilian Labor Party and the Brazilian Labor Renewal Party.

[buritobr]

How are Collor's and Dilma's impeachment similar?
Both can be considered "parliamentary coups". The Congress removed these presidents from the office only because the Congress did not like these presidents. This is not acceptable in a presidential republic like Brazil. The Congress behaved as if we live in a parliamentary republic, but we don't live in a parliamentary republic. Minor offenses were used as excuses to use the impeachment law, in order to make the impeachment look like legal. Almost all the leftist parties supported the Collor's impeachment. Almost all the rightist parties, which supported Collor's election, supported his impeachment too. Leonel Brizola was the sole leftist politician who did not support Collor's impeachment. He though that the leftist parties were committing a big mistake, because one day a leftist president would be target of an impeachment process. The Congress has always conservative majorities. Brizola died in 2004. He did not have time to see his prediction becoming reality.

How are Collor's and Dilma's impeachment different?
As I wrote in other thread, Collor's VP Itamar Franco just waited the vote, and only after that he buit his cabinet. Michel Temer bargained the votes for the impeachment. He offered ministries for the parties whose Congressmen voted yes.
Itamar Franco followed Collor's policies. He did not try to implement Lula's program (Lula was the losing candidate in 1989, when Collor was elected). Michel Temer wants to implement Aécio Neves' program, the program of the losing candidate. That's why the leftists are very angry.

[buritobr]

For the Americans who read this thread, imagine the following situation, an analogy for Dilma's impeachment:

Consider that the USA has a Democratic president and a Republican strong majority in both houses of the Congress. The vice president is a conservative Democrat who has close ties to Republican leaders. The Democratic president accepted this ticket in the election in order to have centrist votes. There is an economic crisis. The president wants to increase taxes in order to reduce the budget deficits. The Congress wants to cut spending in welfare. No agreement is reached. Then, the Congress finds a minor mistake commited by the president as an excuse to impeach him. The conservative Democrat VP becomes the president and appoints top Republican leaders to be secretaries. He leads a conservative administration supported by the Republicans in the Congress. Since the USA is a more serious country, I don't believe this situation could happen there.