Dom Phillips
By Dom Phillips
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff may not be having as happy a Christmas as the rest of her country. It has been a tough year: A gruelling re-election victory, humiliation for the national team in an otherwise successful World Cup, a flailing economy, and a scandal involving beloved state-controlled oil company Petrobras, dubbed Big Oil, that just won’t go away. Plus, local media gleefully reports, she is cramping her holidays with a crash diet to lose weight before her second inauguration ceremony on January 1.
Rousseff may have consoled herself by joining millions of families all over Brazil watching the December 23 TV special by singer Roberto Carlos — an iconic Brazilian crooner whose annual special is a national institution. Brazil’s Bing Crosby — in a white suit.
Rousseff’s aggressive re-election campaign in October’s acrimonious election stoked fear in voters over what would happen if opposition candidates won. They would, the campaign said, deliver the country to white-shirted bankers and cancel social policies like the Workers Party’s flagship income support scheme, “Family Allowance.”
After the election, Rousseff appointed banker Joaquim Levyas as Finance Minister to turn around the stumbling economy. In his first speech, he said he would consolidate social advances, assuring that the Family Allowance was safe — in the hands of a white-shirted banker.
Brazil loses when emotion takes over strategy, as its World Cup campaign showed. Television footage of the national team lining up in the tunnel for the semifinal against Germany showed apprehensive, nervous Brazilian players beside relaxed, confident Germans. Brazil was humiliated in a historic 7-1 defeat.
Instead of learning from that epic loss, Brazil apparently prefers to forget it. Emotion is muddying the Big Oil scandal that went public in March, when an investigation dubbed Operation Car Wash led to the arrests of money-changer Alberto Youssef and former Petrobras supply director Paulo Costa. Petrobras executive-turned-whistleblower Venina Fonseca denounced irregularities in e-mails to Petrobras CEO Graça Foster since 2008 — Foster was promoted to her job in 2012 and says Fonseca never alleged corruption.
During the election, this was a dry, corporate scandal that many voters couldn’t understand. Now it has been humanised by Fonseca, who detailed them during a suitably emotional interview broadcast on the prime-time television show Fantastico on December 21.
Given the work the judges, prosecutors and police are doing in the Big Oil scandal, the results could be transformative. With Carlos supplying the soundtrack, Brazilians could continue to laugh and cry at their country’s problems. But at least they would have the vocabulary to appoint institutional responsibility afterward. WP-Bloomberg
By Dom Phillips
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff may not be having as happy a Christmas as the rest of her country. It has been a tough year: A gruelling re-election victory, humiliation for the national team in an otherwise successful World Cup, a flailing economy, and a scandal involving beloved state-controlled oil company Petrobras, dubbed Big Oil, that just won’t go away. Plus, local media gleefully reports, she is cramping her holidays with a crash diet to lose weight before her second inauguration ceremony on January 1.
Rousseff may have consoled herself by joining millions of families all over Brazil watching the December 23 TV special by singer Roberto Carlos — an iconic Brazilian crooner whose annual special is a national institution. Brazil’s Bing Crosby — in a white suit.
Rousseff’s aggressive re-election campaign in October’s acrimonious election stoked fear in voters over what would happen if opposition candidates won. They would, the campaign said, deliver the country to white-shirted bankers and cancel social policies like the Workers Party’s flagship income support scheme, “Family Allowance.”
After the election, Rousseff appointed banker Joaquim Levyas as Finance Minister to turn around the stumbling economy. In his first speech, he said he would consolidate social advances, assuring that the Family Allowance was safe — in the hands of a white-shirted banker.
Brazil loses when emotion takes over strategy, as its World Cup campaign showed. Television footage of the national team lining up in the tunnel for the semifinal against Germany showed apprehensive, nervous Brazilian players beside relaxed, confident Germans. Brazil was humiliated in a historic 7-1 defeat.
Instead of learning from that epic loss, Brazil apparently prefers to forget it. Emotion is muddying the Big Oil scandal that went public in March, when an investigation dubbed Operation Car Wash led to the arrests of money-changer Alberto Youssef and former Petrobras supply director Paulo Costa. Petrobras executive-turned-whistleblower Venina Fonseca denounced irregularities in e-mails to Petrobras CEO Graça Foster since 2008 — Foster was promoted to her job in 2012 and says Fonseca never alleged corruption.
During the election, this was a dry, corporate scandal that many voters couldn’t understand. Now it has been humanised by Fonseca, who detailed them during a suitably emotional interview broadcast on the prime-time television show Fantastico on December 21.
Given the work the judges, prosecutors and police are doing in the Big Oil scandal, the results could be transformative. With Carlos supplying the soundtrack, Brazilians could continue to laugh and cry at their country’s problems. But at least they would have the vocabulary to appoint institutional responsibility afterward. WP-Bloomberg
