Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/15/brazil-protesters-rouseff-impeachment-petrobas

by bruna597 • 11 years ago

34 25 11 years ago

hudell2• 11 years ago

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.

bilbo0s• 11 years ago

Well that's the problem. Most people wouldn't mind having someone else in charge...

but no one wants any of these guys in charge.

So therein lies the quandary.

martinrame• 11 years ago

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.

phdp• 11 years ago

I think that is a silly argument. In that case, any march or protest of the elected majority is not representative of people's thoughts, because the protest will contain fewer people than then number of people who voted in the majority. The fact that you can get 1 million people to stop what they are doing and protest shows that there is a solid group of people discontent with something. I couldn't find any exact numbers, but I'd imagine that the occupy movement was about the same size. That movement was certainly not unimportant, despite the small size of that compared to the US population.

mirekrusin• 11 years ago

Living in Rio as an expat and hearing in the evening people banging wooden spoons in the cooking pans on their balconies I can tell you - majority of people seem to be pissed off, I've never seen something like that.

dguaraglia2• 11 years ago

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 approval rate was something over 80%, which was better than any other president before him. And yet, if you asked the right people, you'd the country was about to explode because people were so unhappy.

rbanffy4• 11 years ago

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%"

dashoffset2• 11 years ago

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

andrenth7• 11 years ago

There were more than 2 million people in the streets country-wise, not to mention the nd pan-banging protests in apartment windows every time a government representative appears on TV.

John Oliver has put it very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51W2N68zckY

andrenth7• 11 years ago

In a poll mentioned today in the news, people of lower income were interviewed. None of the interviewees were present in the protests; however, all said they felt represented by them.

So there's what the "left hand" media says (generously sponsored by government money) and what the people say, and it's not the same thing.

rasz_pl• 11 years ago

Fascism has a way of surfacing during difficult times. Greece has a big problem with Golden Dawn again. When crisis struck they started recruiting using food drives/soup kitchens for 'pure Greeks' for example.

epx• 11 years ago

Would not get anything near that if the election was today. Election was won basically by public spending + promising that no austerity measures would take place after the election. Brazil has lost a golden opportunity to improve itself between 2005-2012 just because the current party wanted to win one more election.

rbanffy4• 11 years ago

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.

andrenth7• 11 years ago

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"?

victor22• 11 years ago

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.

dashoffset2• 11 years ago

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

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

Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment

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