Running an entire country takes a great deal of trust and popular support. The difficulty comes when, as we see in Brazil at the moment, that trust and support erodes and a country’s newly elected leader is left with little power over their own fate. With only months passing since our presidential election, 63 per cent of the population now support impeaching our new president.
At the end of last year, Brazil was in an election frenzy. Two candidates were considered by most analysts to be the clear favourites: Dilma Rousseff (who was standing for the incumbent Workers’ Party) and Aecio Neves (representing the largest opposition party, the Social Democrats). The run up to the election was more fraught than any other in recent history. With violent fluctuations in the polls and a freak accident in which one of the main candidates, Eduardo Campos, tragically died in a helicopter collision, the battle for power made the contest taking place in the United Kingdom look remarkably smooth.
After months of tireless campaigning, in the end it was Rousseff who won the day, as she emerged with the narrowest electoral margin in modern Brazilian history. However, the road since has been anything but smooth.
Within weeks of the polls closing, people were voicing concerns that the Workers’ Party had defrauded the elections. While in many other countries this problem could be rectified by calling a recount of votes cast, our use of voting machines ruled out this possibility. The result it that the ruling party is plagued by the damning accusation of illegitimacy, undermining it at every turn.
Perhaps even more problematic have been the many corruption scandals that have come to light in the past months, detailing illegal interactions involving the Workers’ Party and Brazil’s most valuable company, Petrobras. Consider the English people realising that BP (but a BP with far larger assets and more control over the economy) had been running a huge scheme of bribery that washes billions of pounds out of the company directly to the Conservative Party. Terrifyingly for the people of Brazil, this is what has been happening at our largest petroleum company. The result has been widespread public condemnation of the party and the launching of an investigation which has led to the arrest of many people, including none other than three leading figures in the Workers’ Party.
Naturally, these events have played directly into the hands of the opposition. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the numbers calling for Rousseff to be impeached have been growing rapidly, despite the fact that there is still no direct proof that she was involved in the bribery scheme. Millions of people have taken to the streets in protest, while in a recent national poll 63 per cent supported her impeachment. The significance of this is shown by the fact that only four months after entering power, more people are now calling for her constitutional rejection than voted for her in the first place. Brazilian politics is unique in many ways.
However, what is true there (as of all other democracies and quasi-democracies) is that the Government must attempt to realise the will of the people. Fail this and your support will fail you. As shown so clearly in Brazil, that is politics.
