As this crisis unfolds, it becomes clear that president Dilma Rousseff seems to behave more like a losing goalie – making futile attempts to shield her team, and the little that remains of her government’s viability – than like the president which Brazilians vested with trust, and legitimacy to “lead” in 2011.
As the country prepares to host the Olympic games it simultaneously battles with corruption, an issue which, a leading attorney in the Petrobras scandal characterizes as a “monster” in Brazil.
Desde hace algunos meses, la crisis económica y el abismo político en el que se encuentran los gobiernos de Brasil y México han ocupado editoriales y portadas de los principales diarios internacionales. Mientras Brasil enfrenta una recesión económica agravada por una débil gobernabilidad, México se hunde en una pocilga moral caracterizada por la corrupción endémica y una crisis de derechos humanos que ha tocado fondo.
Together with the current economic recession, a hovering corruption scandal, a potential presidential impeachment and now the WHO declaration of a global emergency over the Zika virus, Brazil seems to be taking more than it can handle.
The first step to fixing Brazil’s crisis will have to involve recognizing that the rot goes much deeper than it might seem. Brazil’s troubles began with the downturn in the global commodity markets, but the roots of the malaise trace much farther.
Even in Latin America, a region often thought to share the same democratic orientation and values of the U.S. and Europe, there are some striking differences among groups of countries regarding supporting norms and practices on human rights internationally, with some countries lining up more with autocratic countries of the Global South.
Politics and diplomacy provide the main themes for Latin Pulse this week. The program marks the anniversary of the diplomatic opening between Cuba and the United States with a special interview recorded in Havana. It also follows the complicated corruption scandal in Brazil that has now intersected with the political movement to impeach and unseat President Dilma Rousseff.
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio da Silva dreamed of a new world order. Their successors watched it fall to pieces.
El último episodio de relieve democrático tuvo lugar el pasado 2 de diciembre, cuando el Presidente de la Cámara de Diputados, Eduardo Cunha, anunció la apertura de un proceso de destitución parlamentaria contra Dilma Rousseff.
When Presidents Obama and Rousseff gather next week in Washington, DC, one topic, unfortunately, is unlikely to get much attention: the roiling global rights crisis. But there is a common agenda on which both democratic leaders could establish a much-needed, progressive consensus, involving digital freedom and promoting dialogue and human and democratic rights in Cuba and Venezuela. Will they?
