Though news about the American presidential race is never lacking, people on both sides criticize candidates for their stances and mistakes, and many claim this race will end the United States as we know it, the American primaries and the beginning of the election season have been relatively tame compared to the political situation Brazil currently faces. Less than a month after the successful, yet controversial 2016 Rio Olympics came to an end, Brazil once again came to the forefront of the news. On August 31, Dilma Rousseff, the 36th president of Brazil, was impeached after five years in power. Once having an approval rating of nearly 80%, the general consensus of the Brazilian people turned to discontent, with less than 10% of Brazilians supporting her, as concern about corruption grew and many riots broke out in Brazilian cities demanding her resignation. In late 2015, Rousseff was accused of breaking fiscal laws, an allegation which she denied. After lengthy trial proceedings, she was found guilty of moving funds between government budgets and was impeached. Her former vice president, Michel Temer, is now the leader of Brazil. In addition to the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, Brazil has been further destabilized by Eduardo Cunha, former speaker of Brazil’s lower house, facing losing his seat over accusations of lying about Swiss bank accounts. Cunha was a major political opponent of Rousseff, a member of the PMDB party, the party which Temer also belongs to, and Cunha is considered to be the architect of the impeachment process of Rousseff. Furthermore, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president who preceded Rousseff, one of Brazil’s most popular leaders, and a major consideration for candidacy in the 2018 elections, is being tried for money laundering charges over alleged dealings with Petrobras, the state oil company. Should he be found guilty, he too would be unable to run for president in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Though news about the American presidential race is never lacking, people on both sides criticize candidates for their stances and mistakes, and many claim this race will end the United States as we know it, the American primaries and the beginning of the election season have been relatively tame compared to the political situation Brazil currently faces. Less than a… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}