Mediation will not quell the anger on Brazil’s streets
By Paulo Sotero
Financial Times, June 23, 2013 6:00 pm
The emerging middle class bought into a dream and now say it is time to deliver, says Paulo Sotero
A week of unexpected and unprecedentedly widespread street protests that turned violent at times has left Brazilians both apprehensive and hopeful about their future. After days of what aides described as “perplexity”, President Dilma Rousseff tried to calm the nation on Friday with a televised address, promising to work with all parties, governors and mayors to improve public services and reform a discredited political system. She tried to embrace the protests while vowing to restore public order and prevent the repetition of vandalism and looting in various cities and attacks against public buildings that had shocked the country.
Ms Rousseff’s speech did not work. Protesters ignored the president’s warnings against acts of violence that “damage Brazil’s image abroad” and continued to demonstrate. In São Paulo, a highway that leads to the city’s airport was blocked, forcing passengers to walk 5km to terminals, carrying their luggage. More than 100 flights were delayed or cancelled. Rallies will continue. Two-thirds of people polled in São Paulo say they want the protests to go on. After seeing public transport fares reduced by going to the streets, they now want better healthcare and education. A national day of protest has been called for July 1.
Fuelled by multiple grievances, from the poor quality of public services while millions of reals are spent to build football stadiums to revulsion against a political class seen as largely corrupt and self-serving, rallies held in more than 100 cities conveyed above all a deep sense of exasperation with the country’s slow pace of change. The sentiment is especially strong among the young emerging middle class that took to the streets. Beneficiaries of two decades of democracy with economic stability, they bought the dream of a more prosperous and equitable Brazil drummed up by their leaders and are now saying that it is time to start delivering.
The problem for Ms Rousseff is that the growth model based on consumption rather than investment pursued by her predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is exhausted. A stalled economy with rising inflation and deteriorating fiscal and external accounts in a challenging global environment limits what she can do. There is little room to negotiate agreements necessary to deliver on the promises she made, such as a national reform of urban transport and “a profound reform” needed to add “oxygen to our old political system”. These promises and people’s demands cannot be delivered as fast as reducing bus fares. Some are controversial. Ms Rousseff’s plan to bring thousands of foreign doctors to Brazil to improve public healthcare services was strongly rebuffed by three national medical associations. They reminded the president she was successfully treated for cancer by doctors trained in the country.
Adding to the difficulties, Ms Rousseff’s centralised decision-making and her lack of taste for the give-and-take of politics is now seen by her allies as part of the problem. According to media reports published as the protests raged, leaders of the president’s coalition and members of the business community are complaining about her governing style to Mr Lula da Silva. The talkative former leader has remained out of view and conspicuously silent.
A cabinet reform, including a change of the discredited economic team led by finance minister Guido Mantega, that could be presented as a new beginning seems improbable. It would be interpreted as an admission of responsibility for Brazil’s mediocre economic performance under Ms Rousseff and, at this point, would not do much to quiet the streets. The president’s late and unimpressive response to the protests raises doubts about her own standing. There is no longer a sense of inevitability over Ms Rousseff’s re-election in October 2014.
With leaders showing little inclination to speak and act in a political landscape altered in ways they do not seem to understand, former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso expressed doubts in an interview to the Folha de São Paulo newspaper about “the capacity of political parties to capture [the meaning of the protests] and change their message and connection with social media”. The irony is that the effective use by organisers and protesters of Facebook, Twitter and instant messaging has mobilised enormous popular pressure on a government proud of having expanded the access of millions of formerly poor and middle-class Brazilians to mobile phones and internet services.
Over the weekend, a group that in 2010 successfully pushed for the approval of a constitutional amendment banning politicians convicted of corruption from running for office started collecting the 1.5m signatures needed for Congress to vote on a political reform intended to reduce the number of parties and politicians and make both accountable to voters.
For now, and until the political system changes, traditional forms of mediation are out and direct democracy is in.
The writer is director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
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