More Bad News For Rousseff
As Dilma Rousseff faces fallout from corruption scandals, protests, and a drooping economy, the news continues to be sobering:
Estimates by financial analysts regarding annual inflation in Brazil for 2015 have once again increased, from 7.77 percent to 7.93 percent this week, according to the latest Focus Survey, released by the Central Bank. According to the survey analysts also see deterioration in the country’s GDP and industrial production, a devaluation of the country’s currency and a decrease in foreign investments this year.GDP going down, inflation going up, foreign investment going down. Current estimates show better results for 2016, but that's cold comfort for Rousseff right now. Her approval is down sharply, but it can also move up quickly if things improve. It seems for now that she just needs to slog through the rest of 2015. Impeachment seems unlikely in the absence of evidence against Rousseff herself in the Petrobras scandal, and even evidence against her while she was in charge of it wouldn't amount to an impeachable offense as president. It would, in fact, merit a no-confidence vote, but in a presidential system no such thing exists.
2 comments:
An ongoing question that's been gnawing at me for many months. The Petrobras scandal started to break before last year's election (specifically, it began to break after the World Cup). But i didn't understand then and still don't understand why it didn't become a big election issue. The whole thing faded into the background while the election process happened, then only started attracting attention again in 2015.
Really don't understand why the opposition didn't make it into a massive issue, because it was already obviously massive back then. I don't think it was a case of Marina dropping the ball either, because the whole issue package could have been delegated to one of the business-oriented groups opposed to PT.
Good question--it seemed to become an issue mostly when Rousseff started talking belt-tightening. Maybe so many years of teflon Lula left the opposition thinking it wasn't worth the effort? I don't know.
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