Dilma Roussef
Rousseff has been impeached and removed, supposedly for corruption, though there’s little evidence she personally benefited from corruption, while many of those who impeached her are very corrupt. Brazil was a “miracle economy” for much of the past decade and a half while the “left” ran things, but much of that was due to forces beyond local control, like the price of oil and the strength of the world and Chinese economies.
The new President’s “plan” is as follows:
President Michel Temer said on Wednesday that fixing Brazil’s economy would not be easy, but his priority was to pass a spending cap this year, attract foreign investment, reduce unemployment, and begin pension system reform.
A.K.A., neoliberal austerity. Unions will be crushed, pensions will be cut, spending will be cut, and outsiders will be allowed to buy up Brazilian companies and resources for relatively cheap, so long as Brazilian elites get a cut.
Rousseff wasn’t the greatest prize, having run neoliberal-light policies in many areas, but she wasn’t personally corrupt and she engaged in far less austerity than Temer will.
Parties of the left are being crushed in much of South America for the simple reason that they ran the countries during the resource boom of the 2000s and have not been able to manage the drop in resource prices, first from oil, then generally as China stopped buying so many resources. I’ve discussed the perils of basing a left-wing government on resources before.
(See also Mandos on the coup.)
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