CBN BRASIL

Monday, March 21, 2016

The Observer view on Brazil

The road to Rio 2016 is lined with economic crises, Zika panic, rioting and a corruption scandal that has engulfed swaths of Dilma Rousseff’s government, the opposition and the Brazilian establishment



Demonstrators on the streets of São Paulo, Brazil
Countries hosting the Olympics generally try hard to present their most attractive face to a watching global audience. When London held the Games in 2012, organisers went to sometimes embarrassing lengths to advertise the UK’s values and virtues. Not so Brazil, where the 2016 Summer Olympics take place in August, in and around Rio de Janeiro. Whether by coincidence or not, the country’s many serious problems are coming to a head at once and all very much in public view. To indulge a sporting metaphor, setting the nation’s affairs in order by the time the fans arrive is looking like a marathon task, while numerous high-stepping politicians seem destined for the high jump.
On a weekend when Barack Obama pays a historic first visit to Cuba, paving the way for free-market capitalism as an alternative to the island’s communist, collectivist tradition, Brazil’s troubles will inevitably be seen by some as further evidence of the retreat of the socialist “pink tide” in Latin America. With Hugo Chávez gone, Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution is on its knees. Argentina, where Obama goes next, has shifted right. This is a simplistic misreading. As Brazil shows, leaders of the left have made many mistakes. But it is not their ideology that is rejected – it is incompetence and illegality.

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