Dilma Rousseff is on trial – and so is Brazil’s faltering democracy
Dilma Rousseff is on trial – and so is Brazil’s faltering democracy
The suspension of the president is the latest blow for a country that is still struggling to shake off its history of authoritarianism and social inequality
Carolina Matos
Friday 13 May 2016 04.00 EDT
The impeachment of Dilma Rousseff is a sad day for democracy and can be seen as a tragedy for Brazil’s struggling path towards further democratisation. But it also signals a new beginning, a possibility for the renewal of hope. Brazil, like other Latin American countries such as Argentina and Chile, still has a long way to go before it can become an advanced stable democracy, where pluralism and diversity in the media and in the political public sphere is encouraged and celebrated, and not undermined. A place where the intellectual zeitgeist is one of equal opportunities, social inclusion and fair play.
Rousseff has been a victim of her own mistakes in the economy, currently engulfed in a deep recession, and her inability to deal politically with allies and with a hostile, aggressive and conservative opposition. But she has also fallen foul of a process that is being seen as extremely controversial and hypocritical – for many a form of “soft coup” – led by politicians who themselves have been accused of corruption.
The exaggerated claims of the demise of Latin America’s leftwing parties have been an easy, and lazy, attempt to dismiss the political forces that struggle for more justice and more democracy. There have, of course, been setbacks across the continent, from Argentina to Guatemala and Venezuela. The history of Latin American populism is a long one, but the fact of the matter is that leftwing parties on the continent have had a mixed bag of success and failure, and are all very different from each other.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Michelle Bachelet, from Brazil and Chile respectively, chose to adopt a New Labour-style form of social democracy in contrast to other more populist parties of the region. The setbacks have occurred because of their failure to conduct political reform or to respond to the corrupt practices of some of their own members, while simultaneously creating the means to grant more autonomy to federal policy and the justice system in their fight against corruption.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/13/dilma-rousseff--trial-brazil-democracy
