Por Motta Araujo
DILMA NO NEW YORK TIMES – Excelente entrevista da Presidente Dilma publicada hoje com destaque no New York Times.
Sóbria, precisa, simpática, a Presidente marcou um gol para o público americano. Disse que, mesmo presa durante o regime militar, torcia para o Brasil na Copa, disse que quer retomar o diálogo com o governo americano no ponto em que parou no ano passado, acho na minha modesta opinião que deveria ser mais enfática ao dar boas vindas aos torcedores americanos que virão para a Copa, será o segundo maior grupo de torcedores estrangeiros e esse tipo de cortesia protocolar é muito bem vista pelos americanos.
A entrevista causou boa impressão em Washington, foi uma boa surpresa, inclusive sua opinião sobre Cuba casa com a mesma opinião de muitos diplomatas do Departamento de Estado, ao defender a construção do porto de Mariel, que será operado por uma companhia particular de Singapura, Dilma diz que Cuba precisa de mais economia de mercado e não embargo.
Parabéns a quem assessorou essa entrevista, está no tom certeiro, não precisa nem mais e nem menos.
Do New York Times
Simon Romero
The year was 1970. Agents of Brazil’s military dictatorship had arrested Dilma Rousseff, then a member of a fledgling urban guerrilla group, the Palmares Armed Revolutionary Vanguard. Inside the prison where she was being held in São Paulo, a debate raged among the inmates: Should they support Brazil in that year’s World Cup?
“At that time, many people opposed to the government initially questioned whether we would be strengthening the dictatorship by rooting for Brazil’s team,” Ms. Rousseff, 66, who is now Brazil’s president, said in an interview here on Tuesday. “I had no such dilemma.”
She said resistance dissipated among the jailed guerrillas in the period leading up to Brazil’s victory over Italy in the championship match, which took place in Mexico City.
With Brazil’s government facing widespread discontent over its preparations for the World Cup, Ms. Rousseff made the rare public reference to her imprisonment decades ago, when interrogators tortured her during three years in jail. Sipping orange juice and nibbling on cashews at a spacious circular table in her office, she defended loans from state banks for new stadiums for the soccer tournament and insisted that Brazilians planning to shun the event were a “small minority.”
As the start of this year’s World Cup on June 12 approaches, Ms. Rousseff is grappling with a wave of strikes, a sluggish economy and a presidential race pitting her against rivals who have climbed in public opinion polls. While she is still viewed as a favorite in the October elections, her government has come under criticism over delays in finishing World Cup construction and an array of other stalled public works projects.
A survey released on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center found that 72 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with the way things were going in Brazil, up from 55 percent just weeks before huge street protests in June 2013 shook Brazilian cities.
The survey, based on 1,003 face-to-face interviews with Brazilian adults in April, also found that two-thirds said Brazil’s economy was in bad shape, and that 61 percent thought hosting the World Cup was a bad idea because it took resources away from public services, including health care and education.
The glum mood, which follows an economic boom that culminated in 7.5 percent growth in 2010, has been compounded by scandals at Brazil’s national oil company, Petrobras, and a multiyear slowdown in economic growth. The economy grew only 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2014, slower than the 0.4 percent expansion reported in the previous three months.
Still, Ms. Rousseff, a member of the leftist Workers Party that has governed Brazil since 2003, vigorously defended her economic record in an hourlong interview at the presidential palace in the modernist capital, Brasília. She insisted that various measures showed that life had generally improved in Brazil.
Citing antipoverty projects that have pulled millions of people into the middle class over the last decade, she said incomes for poorer Brazilians had risen well above the rate of inflation, making Brazil’s progress in reducing poverty comparable to Spain’s experience after the death in 1975 of the dictator Francisco Franco, which ushered in a transition to democratic government.
Emphasizing that inequality had fallen in Brazil while growing in the United States and parts of Europe, Ms. Rousseff, an economist by training, spoke glowingly of the work of Thomas Piketty, the professor at the Paris School of Economics whose sweeping studies of inequality have gained widespread attention.
“I think he’s done a fantastic job,” Ms. Rousseff said of Mr. Piketty, who has stood by his conclusions about the evolution of wealth inequality after The Financial Times attacked his data.
Ms. Rousseff said that rising incomes in Brazil had created new challenges, reflected in the large demonstrations that have given way to smaller protests, often led by housing activists or anti-establishment groups. She said that many of the protesters’ complaints about the poor quality of services, whether from governments or private companies, were understandable.
“Services grew less than income,” she said, noting as an example the surging access to air travel in Brazil, which has left many travelers fatigued at the mere thought of dealing with the country’s swamped airport infrastructure. Brazil’s larger middle class, she said, has “more desire, more longings, more demands.”
“This forms an intrinsic part of the human being in the society in which we live,” she said. “He obtains something, but he wants more, which is very good.”
Beyond the challenges her government faces before the World Cup, with security forces bracing for a possible return of large-scale protests against spending on the tournament, Ms. Rousseff said the event offered an opportunity to strengthen Brazil’s position on the global stage.
She also said she was prepared for a thaw in relations with the United States, after a souring last year over revelations that the National Security Agency had spied on Ms. Rousseff and her inner circle of senior aides. She noted her plans to meet with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. when he visits Brazil this month to watch the United States soccer team play Ghana.
“I’m certain we can pick up our relations where we left off,” Ms. Rousseff said. She said she was prepared to consider rescheduling a state visit to Washington, which she had postponed in September in response to the N.S.A. revelations.
In other matters, Ms. Rousseff said she expected Brazil to continue raising its diplomatic and economic profile in Latin America and the Caribbean. She singled out Cuba as a country where Brazilian companies were making inroads. “We’re betting much more on a policy of investment than a blockade,” she said, referring to the United States’ trade embargo against Cuba, which began in 1960.
In one example of Brazil’s strengthening ties with Cuba, the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht has carried out a $900 million upgrade of Cuba’s Mariel port. Ms. Rousseff said that overhauling Cuba’s economy required the application of “more market forces, not less.”
Helping Cuba to open its economy also reflects on Brazil’s, and Ms. Rousseff’s, political evolution since military rule ended here in 1985. While Brazil now has a president who was a Marxist guerrilla in her youth, it stands out among its neighbors for a law under which perpetrators of rights abuses during the dictatorship are shielded from prosecution.
Brazil’s highest court has upheld the amnesty law, meaning that Ms. Rousseff’s torturers remain free even as commissions examine the politically motivated crimes of that era.
Ms. Rousseff said that as president, she respected the law, despite her personal views. “I don’t believe in vindictiveness, but I also don’t believe in forgiving,” she said.
“It’s a question of the truth,” she added. “It’s extremely important for Brazil to know what happened, because that will mean it won’t happen again.”
Assis Ribeiro
4 de junho de 2014 11:38 amEssa é a Dilma que
Essa é a Dilma que vejo.
Diferente da “Veja” e de alguns, né AA?
Lionel Rupaud
4 de junho de 2014 11:48 amAlias Assis, achei os relatos dos jornalistas esportivos
que foram convidados no jantar com a Presidenta, muito engraçados (de ridículos).
Mesmo o Kfoury que se acha tão intelectual ficou surpreso com o fato que a Dilma Roussef não morde, não é o pittbull que seus patrões escrevem e fazem escrever diariamente.
No fundo escrevendo absurdos diariamente eles acabam acreditando nesses absurdos, o que não deixa de ser muito engraçado numa profissão onde todos se acham absurdamente mais informados e espertos que seus pobre leitores…
H Menon Jr.
4 de junho de 2014 12:31 pmUm bom exemplo Lionel, é a
Um bom exemplo Lionel, é a ESPN Brasil, aliás, onde Juca Kfouri (o enrustidão mór do jornalismo esportivo…) exerce tremenda influência nos jovens jornalistas esportivos da casa. Os caras foram tão incentivados a desancar a Copa que, agora, ficou até engraçado. Você percebe nitidamente que tem uma ordem superior (eles precisam faturar…) para “promover” a Copa mas a meninada não se contém… sem perceber, e mesmo pedindo sua audiência para o evento, eles acabam te desistimulando a ver a Copa com as tradicionais críticas inconsistentes. É hilário…
Flavio Martins e Nascimento
4 de junho de 2014 2:13 pmRapaz, pra acompanhar futebol
Rapaz, pra acompanhar futebol e Copa hoje – apenas futebol sem encheção de saco – só a Fox, quem diria.
Jurandir Paulo
4 de junho de 2014 11:55 amApenas curiosidade
Nada foi perguntado sobre a posição do Brasil após o encontro em julho do BRICS, onde ela deve assinar e colocar dinheiro em um banco internacional que irá rivalizar com o FMI. Junto, ou logo, estarão criando nova moeda entre o grupo, abandonando o dólar. O NYT, imagino, mudará o tom. Esta outra Dilma, creio, é a Dilma que mais gosto e apoio.
Motta Araujo
4 de junho de 2014 3:13 pm1.O FMI não é um banco.
2.O
1.O FMI não é um banco.
2.O banco dos BRICS vai ter um capital de US$50 bilhões, os 10 maiores bancos mundiais tem de ativos CADA UM
mais de US$2 trilhões, o fundo de investimentos BlackRock tem recursos de investidores US$3,6 trilhões, os 12 maiores fundos de investimento americanos tem cada um recursos de investidores superiores a US$1 trilhão, o total dos recursos dos fundos de investimentos dos EUA é US$60 trilhões, um banco com US$50 bilhões é um banco médio da Florida.
3.Criar nova moeda precisa de duas guerras mundiais e 200 anos de confiabilidade nas instituições de um Pais.
A China, maior dos BRICS, é governada pelo Partico Comunista chinês, é uma ditadura, a Russia é outra ditadura, regimes desse tipo não tem credibilidade para criar moeda reserva mundial.
4.Moeda reserva depende da ACEITAÇÃO dos outros paises e não da vontade de criar uma moeds que seja aceita em qualquer lugar do mundo.
5.O Mercosul tem há 6 anos normas para que todo o comercio dentro do bloco seja pago em moeda dos paises parceiros,
mas o dolar ainda é usado em 98% das transações.
Deixe de ilusões e viva na realidade, que pode ser mudada por evolução gradual e não pela vontade de politicos de ocasião em quem ninguem confia
Athos
4 de junho de 2014 5:00 pmA não ser que a moeda seja
A não ser que a moeda seja atrelada a alguma coisa, como o Ouro.
Aí…quem sabe.
RGodinho
4 de junho de 2014 11:57 amEu quase consigo ver o Sr.
Eu quase consigo ver o Sr. Motta babando de felicidade por Dilma não ter constrangido o governo americano…
Frank
4 de junho de 2014 2:08 pm72% de “dissatisfied”
Esses 72% de “dissatisfied” vem do globo, e é altamente questionável comparado a outras recentes pesquisas…
Marly
4 de junho de 2014 6:13 pmA mídia, sempre a venal mídia!
Hoje pela manhã, ouvindo rádio enquanto estava na cozinha, ouvi comentário totalmente deturpado e desfavorávle à Dilma, sobre essa mesma reportagem. A MÍDIA BRASILEIRA é a maior inimiga do povo e do país! Fora com essa mídia CRIMINOSA!
PS: Parabéns pela postagem Sr. Araujo!