Brazil: A Divided House

Juan Carlos Hidalgo There were no surprises in Brazil’s runoff election: just as the polls had predicted in the days leading to the vote, President Dilma Rousseff beat Senator Aécio Neves by over 3 percentage points (51.6% to 48.6%). Despite high inflation, widespread corruption charges, and threats of a recession, the incumbent Workers’ Party (PT) won an unprecedented fourth term in power. Now what? Brazil’s electoral map shows a divided country: the poor north and northeast states voted for Rousseff while most of the rich south and south-eastern states went for Neves. This divide has become more pronounced during the years of PT rule, as the incumbent party increases welfare spending every election cycle and warns voters about how the opposition would get rid of these programs if elected. President Rousseff gave a conciliatory speech where she talked about bringing together Brazilians, being a better president than the previous four years, and the need for economic reform. Can she do it? The acrimonious tone of her campaign will make it hard for Rousseff to win over the half of the electorate that voted for Neves. Her appeal to voters wasn’t based on promises of a better future but on scaremongering of what a Neves victory would represent to Brazil’s poor. Moreover, new revelations on the growing corruption scandal at Petrobras that seem to show that Rousseff and her predecessor Lula da Silva were aware of the shenanigans at the state-owned oil giant threaten to...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs