Dilma Rousseff is not just a victim of circumstance

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff has been temporarily suspended and, I suspect, will be thrown out of office for good when the Senate delivers its verdict on the impeachment process against her within the next six months. She is accused of illegally manipulating finances to hide the size of her country’s public deficit in the run up to the country’s 2014 general election. The country now has the right-wing Michel Temer as acting President. But is Rousseff completely to blame, or has her (likely) downfall been accelerated by circumstances beyond her control? The suspended President is a former left-wing guerrilla fighter who was tortured by Brazil's military dictatorship in the 1970s. She became President Lula da Silva’s chief of staff before being handpicked by Lula to be his successor. With progressive social policies, such as the so-called Family Grant that targeted families living in extreme poverty and non-contributory pensions for the rural poor, millions of Brazilians were lifted out of poverty under Lula. This was before the commodities super-cycle ended. The end of this cycle was bound to be bad news for Rousseff. As demand from China declined and commodity prices fell, her popularity was sure to fall also. It could also be claimed that she is the victim of a politico-judicial coup. Arguably, a politically-biased judiciary conspired with a right-wing press and conservative members of parliament to get rid of her on what are, to say the least, flimsy criminal charges. The window-dressing of government finances is of course wrong, but Rousseff is facing far more scrutiny than her predecessors who behaved in much the same way as her. But despite these factors that are beyond her control, there is no question that a mixture of political and economic mistakes has contributed to the mess that she now finds herself in. In the run-up to the election in 2014, Rousseff campaigned against the main opposition candidate, Aecio Neves, alleging he would cut public spending. But once she was re-elected, Rousseff appointed Joaquim Levy, a finance minister whose ideas were very close to the same candidate she had criticised. This minister’s ideas were a far cry from those associated with Rousseff’s party, the Workers’ Party. Attempts by Levy to cut fiscal spending and raise taxes were opposed by the Workers’ Party in Congress and perceived by some citizens as a betrayal of Rousseff’s electoral promises. Facing mounting opposition to austerity, she withdrew her support from Levy’s economic programme, forcing his resignation. The U-turn lost the government the confidence of the business sector and did little to regain congressional support for her economic initiatives, effectively leaving Rousseff with no political or economic weapons to address the growing financial crisis. Congressional opposition to the government’s economic policies was to a considerable extent consequence of Rousseff’s failure to manage the government’s unwieldy multi-party alliance. Rousseff came to office with a reputation as a competent administrator. But with little experience of the political games required to keep her alliance together, it became extremely difficult for her to maintain a parliamentary majority considerably to the right of her government, particularly in light of growing personal unpopularity. The final factor contributing to Rousseff’s ousting is the various corruption scandals currently engulfing the country. Chief among these is the Petrobras scandal. It is alleged that businesses paid state officials more than $3bn in bribes for overpriced construction contracts. These people then channelled the cash into political parties, it is thought. While Rousseff was Chair of Petrobras between 2003 and 2010, she has not been implicated in the scandal personally. It has been argued that over-zealous prosecutors disproportionally targeted members of the Workers’ Party, including former president Lula da Silva, when investigating the scandals. This may well have been the case, but Rousseff must assume responsibility for her actions. In opposition the Workers’ Party defined itself as an “ethical party” to distinguish itself from the corrupt political establishment. However, the Workers’ Party, which has led successive governments since 2003, has failed to address the root causes of corruption. The accusations against Rousseff seem to confirm this. They have also bought votes in Congress, as evidenced by the so-called mensalão scandal of 2005. Corruption was not particularly important politically when the economy was booming, and some may argue that it was a price worth paying if it meant the Workers’ Party could remain in power and implement a progressive social agenda. After all, former president Lula survived the mensalão to win the 2006 election and led office with record popular support. But the costs of the failure to reform a rotten political system and of adopting the same instruments of governance of the political establishment are being paid today. It is a bitter irony that Rousseff has been suspended from office by the vote of senators, a majority of whom are being investigated for corruption. But the whole impeachment process has been driven by political considerations rather than by legal ones. Rousseff should assume her share of responsibility for the mismanagement of the economy and for her inability to keep the governmental coalition united. The Workers’ Party should reflect hard on why it failed to live up to the promise to be an “ethical party” and its consequences for the promise of change that brought Lula da Silva to office in 2002 and has ended with the impeachment of Rousseff in 2016. A new centre-right government has assumed office in the country—but it is not at all clear whether the process by which it did this is legal. Not enough has changed in Brazil since Lula da Silva first won the presidency—and not all change has been in the right direction.