Sunday, October 26, 2014

Dilma wins in Brazilian Presidential runoff

Bloomberg News has an English-language report on Dilma Rousseff's victory in Sunday's election in Brazil that mostly leaves out the nails-on-a-blackboard characterizations that too often characterize articles in the American press on Latin American politics: David Biller and Mario Sergio Lima, Rousseff Re-Elected on Call to Save Brazil’s Social Gains 10/26/2014.

The standard American press filter is that any party or government that doesn't want to let American financial and industrial corporations run wild in their country is deeply suspect.

Reuters' report on the election, Leftist Rousseff narrowly wins second term in Brazil by Brian Winter and Alonso Soto 10/26/2014, is more in line with the standard American press view.

Euronews has a pre-election, 2 1/2 minute report that gives a quick overview of the contest, Brazil: an aristocrat or revolutionary for next president 10/25/2014:



The title refers to Dilma's early political activism, which the Reuters article describes reasonably accurately, "Rousseff, who was jailed and tortured in the early 1970s for opposing that era's military dictatorship, is the country's first woman president."

The McClatchy article gives a good description of the results without a lot of the standard US ideological baggage (Vinod Sreeharsha, Rousseff narrowly wins 2nd term as Brazil’s leader 10/26/2014):

Her triumph came despite a sluggish economy, corruption allegations, discontent over the quality of public services and anger over the government’s handling of two major international sporting events -- last summer’s World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Still, the victory will place Rousseff’s leftist Workers’ Party in power for 16 consecutive years, an unprecedented stint at the helm of Latin America’s largest economy.

With 98 percent of the vote counted, Rousseff, 66, an economist who became Brazil’s first female president in 2010, had won 51.45 percent. Her opponent, Aecio Neves, a senator and former governor of Minas Gerais state, an important mining center, received 48.55 percent, according to the country’s electoral officials. ...

As expected, Rousseff performed best in the country’s northeast, which has had an unprecedented economic boom and seen poverty drop and its middle class expand in the 12 years that Rousseff and her predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, have been in power.
And, yes, "macho" South American countries like Brazil, Argentina and Chile have elected and re-elected female Presidents.

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