Brazilian here, and yeah, we're f*d. It is not a particular party or politician, it is all of our political system that is rotten; It produces and rewards the worst of the worst. Our democracy is very young and fragile (about thirty years old), we have levels of inequality that are inhumane, an education system that is not particularly recognized by producing critical thinkers. The result is a population that is easily manipulated by the political class and a government that is corrupt to the core and at all levels.
The current president was the vice president a few months ago, he assumed after our previous president was impeached. We know that the previous president was not a saint[1] (there is no way someone becomes president with clean hands down here) But people honestly thought that, by supporting Dilma's impeachment, and, by consequence, lowering the influence of the Workers Party they were helping to clean the country, which is sad.
There is a huge ongoing investigation nicknamed Lava Jato (Car Wash), and man! oh man! Politicians are going to jail. Owners of big companies accused of bribing are being forced to cooperate with the justice department and they are revealing the guts of our political system, and it is not pretty.
There is a saying: Brasil não é para amadores (Brazil is not for amateurs). House of Cards does not even compare to what is going on here. We hope that after this storm, the institutions become stronger, and we add a lot of mechanisms to punish bad politicians and add incentives to the good ones.
You mentioned Lava Jato. That is playing out here as well with Odebrecht being uncovered as a highly corrupt organization, with ties to every government in the last 15~ years here.
The funny thing is, most media here covered Brazil's situation very closely and then it is discovered we are in it too.
I was just in Peru two weeks ago, and happened to stay in the hotel as the new Peruvian President, and thus read up on the recent election. This is probably off topic, but I'm curious what your thoughts on that are.
> I was just in Peru two weeks ago, and happened to stay in the hotel as the new Peruvian President
???
About our recent elections, on the last couple of them we have been put through voting for the lesser of the evils somehow. I will give you a bit of background about our recent elections so you can understand what it was to have Kuczynski be elected President.
In 2006, we had a second between Alan Garcia (previously President between '85-'90, a period remembered for having over 6000% inflation) and Ollanta Humala, a retired commander of the military who was involved in killings of terrorists and civilians in the 90s during the war against terrorism. Garcia won because he was perceived as the lesser evil but the truth is that the people in Lima didn't vote for him in the first round.
In 2011, Ollanta Humala ran again and reached the second round by a large margin. His opponent, Keiko Fujimori knocked out our current President, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. Fujimori is the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, who was President between '90-'01 and who is now in prison with charges for corruption and ilicit enrichment, among others. Fujimori resigned his Presidency via fax from Japan while he was on a trip there. Again, most of Lima did not vote for either of these candidates and had to settle for Humala because Fujimori's ties to the 90s were too strong and it is perceived that she only wants to be President to set her father free. There were rumors that Humala's campaign was being funded by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
So, last year was a surprise when Kuczynski advanced to the second round and won the Presidency against Fujimori even by a slight margin. He has been Minister of Economy during one of our best periods in the last 20 years and has worked with the World Bank and in different positions in the government over the years.
But it was tense. The people who don't want a Fujimori in the Presidency really vote against her and those who vote for her are too uneducated to know better or claim she should be given a chance because "she isn't her father". Still, her party won the majority in congress and early on they have been pushing their agenda.
Even now, she seems to be aiming for the 2021 elections.
So, for now we breathe calmly having a competent president in office, but we really need new people that push for presidency that don't have extreme views or are too conservative, something which most candidates seem to be prone to.
I'm a distant observer, so grain of salt: isn't the significance of Dilma's impeachment in the shift from quiet tolerance of corruption, to actually taking some action and demonstrating that not even the president is immune?
In other words, that there is a reasonable expectation (sure, let's see what actually happens now) that this incident will actually cost Temer his career, even if the scope of the incident is much smaller than what has previously been more or less silently tolerated?
Brazil had previously impeached their first democratically elected president, Collor, on relatively trumped-up charges, similar to Dilma. This will be the first time Brazil actually impeaches a president on serious charges.
Edit: This article by Glenn Greenwald (a resident of Brazil) is informative:
The current president was the vice president a few months ago, he assumed after our previous president was impeached. We know that the previous president was not a saint[1] (there is no way someone becomes president with clean hands down here) But people honestly thought that, by supporting Dilma's impeachment, and, by consequence, lowering the influence of the Workers Party they were helping to clean the country, which is sad.
There is a huge ongoing investigation nicknamed Lava Jato (Car Wash), and man! oh man! Politicians are going to jail. Owners of big companies accused of bribing are being forced to cooperate with the justice department and they are revealing the guts of our political system, and it is not pretty.
There is a saying: Brasil não é para amadores (Brazil is not for amateurs). House of Cards does not even compare to what is going on here. We hope that after this storm, the institutions become stronger, and we add a lot of mechanisms to punish bad politicians and add incentives to the good ones.
[1] My opinion
[EDIT] Punctuation