Infographic Tracks Brazil's Protests

This infographic from Estadão shows the dates of the protests, as well as their numbers and locations throughout Brazil. This article includes additional details.

Why Brazilians Hate Their Congress

Too bad Brazil's Congress isn't as
lovely as these buildings

This article from the NYTimes gives an excellent account of why Brazil's Congress has been the target of so much of the anger and frustration of the recent protests.

Even US citizens, who also hold their Congress in extremely low esteem (latest approval figures are below 10%), would be appalled at some of the outrages that are tolerated in Brazil's Congress.

For example:

1. About one-third of the Congress faces charges ranging from corruption to slavery and kidnapping. 

2. Members of Congress have special judicial standing which results in trials that  drag on for years.

3. This is a direct quote from the article which I didn't want to paraphrase because it's so incredible: "In 1963, Senator Arnon de Mello shot dead a fellow legislator on the Senate floor, only to escape imprisonment, since the killing was considered an accident because he was aiming at another senator."

4. De Mello's son, Fernando Collor de Mello, was elected President in 1989, but resigned in disgrace over corruption charges in 1992. But his story doesn't end there. In 2006, he was elected to the Brazilian Senate, where he continues to serve, in spite of an ongoing lawsuit involving corruption that occurred during his Presidency. 

5. Public opinion of Congress is so low, that a professional clown won election to the lower house with more votes than any candidate had ever received in the country's history. 

The article includes more stories of members of Congress who have committed murder, operated death squads, and engaged in various sordid scandals.

To top it all off, members of Brazil's Congress receive large salaries, along with generous fringe benefits and the ability to hire large staffs.

No wonder the Brazilian people have had enough. These crimes and excesses, which are as widespread as they are appalling, are an eye-opener. What surprised me the most is that members of Congress don't even seem to try to hide their offenses, which is usually what happens in the US. 

And as bad as the US Congress may be, no member has ever been accused of overseeing a death squad that disposes of its victims by tossing them into a vat of acid, or dismembering them with a chainsaw. (I did not make that up: read the article). 

I have argued in the past that since Brazil is a democracy, with free and open elections, its citizens can bring about political change by voting. And indeed, Brazilians *do* vote, with a turnout rate near 80%. (This turnout is all the more impressive when one considers the corruption in the system). So I could never understand why Brazilians were so cynical about their political leaders. My feeling was, if they're that bad, why do you keep electing them? 

Well, when the institution of Congress itself is so tainted by systemic corruption and criminal behavior, there are limits to what the voters can do at the ballot box. And that is one reason why the recent protests have brought so many people to the streets.

Detailed Breakdown of Datafolha Poll Results

These graphs provide a detailed breakdown of Datafolha's latest poll, showing the drastic drop in Dilma's approval ratings. The first graph traces her approval over time, beginning with March 2011. She reached a peak in March 2013, just a few months ago, making her rapid decline even more dramatic.

The next set of graphs shows her approval ratings by region, followed by graphs that show approval by income, education, gender, and age. 

There's lots of interesting data here, so feel free to geek out.

Note: In order to make the graph large enough to read, you have a couple of options:

1. Click on the graph, then right click and select "open in another window" in Safari ("open image in new tab" in Chrome). That will allow you to enlarge it enough to be legible in your browser. 

2. Download the PDF to your computer (right click on it and select "save image as"), then open it and enlarge it.

Majority of Brazilians Still Support Hosting the World Cup and Olympics

This graph shows that while the percentage of Brazilians in favor of Brazil hosting the World Cup and the Olympics has declined since 2008, support is still quite high. 

Brazil's Protests From A Global Perspective

Protesters in Bulgaria

An article in the Washington Post focuses on the similarities and connections among recent protests in Turkey, Bulgaria, Brazil, and Spain. In all four cases, the protests have been driven by middle-class citizens who are fed up with ineffective, unresponsive governments. Economic concerns are high on the list of the protesters' complaints. 

Not only do the protesters have similar concerns and grievances, they are also using social media to communicate with each other in English. One observer quoted in the article describes the protesters as "a group of people who are better educated and more connected through technology."

While social networking was a key part of the Arab Spring protests, those protests were more about gaining freedom from repressive regimes than they were about economic issues. The current round of protests have been marked by less violence, though police have used rubber bullets and there have been deaths. 

Dilma's Popularity Plummets 27 Points in Past Three Weeks

In a stunning reversal of political fortune, Dilma's approval ratings have dropped during the past three weeks, according to a poll from Datafolha. 

Prior to the demonstrations, 57% of those questioned gave her a rating of "good" or "excellent." That number has now fallen to 30%, just a little over half what it was before the protests. 

In addition, the number who gave her a rating of "bad" or "worst" has risen from 9% to 25%. 

As the article notes, this is the biggest drop in Presidential approval ratings (as measured by Datafolha) since Fernando Collor in 1990. Collor resigned due to corruption in 1992. 

If her own approval ratings weren't bad enough, approval of the government's management of the economy fell from 49% to 27%, a further indication that public confidence has deteriorated signficantly. 

One positive note for Dilma: 68% approve of her idea for a plebiscite to address political reform. Only 19% disapprove, while 14% had no opinion or did not answer the question. 

While it was expected that Dilma's approval would suffer as a result of the protests, this is a precipitous decline for such a short period of time, especially for someone who has been so popular. In spite of being somewhat slow to respond to the protests in the first place, Dilma's own actions during the protests have been reasonable and conciliatory. It isn't really a question of things that she has done wrong, but rather that she hasn't lived up to the newly articulated expectations of the Brazilian people. 

It's possible that her support wasn't that deep to begin with, or it's possible that she's the victim of the anti-government fervor surrounding the protests. It could be that the public simply wants to put Dilma on notice: do something soon, or we'll vote for someone else. 

Whatever the cause of the drop in approval, the implications for her prospects in the next Presidential election are huge. 

Of course, the elections are still over a year away, and anything can happen. Politicians have risen and fallen in shorter time spans that that, and if the public is withholding support as a form of rebuke or a warning, the number could quickly rebound if people feel that Dilma is acting in good faith to address their concerns. 

But if the PT, her political party, senses that she has been irretrievably damaged by the protests, they don't have a lot of time to waste if they want to find a replacement. 

Dilma is a pragmatist and a realist, and while I don't expect her to simply give up her candidacy based on one poll, neither do I believe that she will drag her party to defeat just to satisfy her own personal pride. If and when she comes to the conclusion that she's no longer a viable candidate, my guess is that she would withdraw in favor of someone else. 

It's far too early to predict Dilma's political demise, but these numbers are quite bad, and it would be dangerous to ignore them. Ignoring the protests in the first place was a mistake that many Brazilian politicians made. 

We'll need to watch future polls, as well as those carried out by other polling groups, in order to see how widespread and long-lasting the disenchantment with Dilma's government has become. But for now, these numbers show that she has a very serious problem. 

Update: Here's a report from Huffington Post on the Datafolha survey results, and here's a report from Reuters. 

Reuters supplied the sample size as well as the margin of error for the poll:

"The Datafolha poll, which was conducted on June 27-28, surveyed 4,717 people and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points." 

Reuters also says that the poll shows that the protests are "a serious threat to her [Dilma's] likely re-election bid next year."

Additional information about the polls, as well as some analysis, can be found in an article on Philly.com. 

Update 2:

Folha has published a graph which shows how Dilma is doing compared to three likely opponents for the Presidency in 2014. While her numbers have dropped, she still holds a narrow lead over her closest competitor.

Brazilian Protests: Giving the Government Some Breathing Room?

In an analysis in Reuters, Anthony Boadle offers a brief history of the Brazilian protests, including the causes, the public backlash against police violence, and the response (or lack of one) from political leaders. He also includes predictions from several Brazilian commentators. 

While the protests continue, they are not as large or widespread as they were during the height of the demonstrations. Could it be that the protesters are waiting to see what the government comes up with in response to their concerns? 

Many commentators have criticized both Congress and Dilma for being slow to respond, and at least in terms of public statements, that accusation is probably justified. It was a week before Dilma issued a brief statement, which was followed the next day with another one, in which she praised the democratic spirit of the protesters. However, it wasn't until almost two weeks had passed before she appeared on TV to speak to the nation.

When response to her TV speech was unenthusiastic, she met with a group of protest leaders the following Monday, and then issued a series of proposals that would allow for public input (first a constituent assembly, a suggestion which was widely criticized and was quickly withdrawn, and then a plebiscite, which appears to have Congressional support).  

Meanwhile, Congress began pushing through a flurry of laws that had been languishing for years, in an effort to show the people that their elected leaders are listening. In addition, a Brazilian federal politician was sent to jail for corruption, the first such jailing in 25 years. 

It's understandable that the protesters and political observers have been critical of the response of the political establishment. However, the government has been faster to respond than governments in almost every other country which has seen massive public protests in the last several years. (As one example, President Obama never held a meeting with leaders of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the US Federal government passed no legislation in response to those protests). 

Whether all of this will be enough to satisfy the newly mobilized Brazilian electorate remains to be seen, as does their willingness to continue to live with the current political structure, with its alphabet soup of political parties (Dilma's own PT relies on a 16-party coalition to maintain its power in Congress). With such a proliferation of parties, Brazilians should (theoretically) feel well-represented, regardless of their political outlooks, but clearly, that is not the case. 

It also remains to be seen if a new political party will emerge from the protests. So far, that seems unlikely, since the leaders of the protests have been vocal in their insistence that they are *not* a political party, and have shown no indication that they want to become one. But if the existing parties cannot or will not address the concerns that sparked the protests, a new party (or the complete re-branding of an existing party) may be necessary.

So what does this all mean? It looks as if the protesters are giving the political leaders some breathing room, but they are not going to just disappear. If the politicians come up with something that is the basis for meaningful reforms, and if they do it quickly, they may be able to demonstrate enough good faith to win back the support of the people. But it seems clear that political leaders can no longer assume that they will automatically earn that support at the ballot box, regardless of what they do once they are in office.