Brazil’s Government and Politics

Brazil’s government is a federal representative democratic republic that is under a presidential system. The President in this type of government is head of both the state and government. Brazil is also a Federalist country. Some major political parties in Brazil are the Centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, the far-left Worker’s Party, and the right-wing Progressive Party. These parties have different stances on the politics in Brazil. The right-wing progressive party is a very conservative group while the Centrist and far-left parties are liberals with left views.

The country’s President, who was elected a few weeks ago, is Jair Bolsonaro. He was a far-right candidate with many conservative views and goals for the country. The legislation of the country is broken by three main parts. These parts include a Senator, Federal and State Representatives, and a City Councilman. (Amber Pariona, 2017).

Democracy and Challenging Situations

The democracy in Brazil is weak and has had many problems with its economy over the years.

The criminal activity and super low unemployment rate in the country has destroyed the economic state of the country. There has been little to no improvement for many years and many are hoping for the newly elected Bolsonaro to make positive strides in flipping the current economic condition into a thriving and rising democracy.

As stated before, Brazil’s government has had many problems over the years and faced many challenging situations that needed to be resolved with change. A key change that the country has gone through is the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff back in 2016.

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Rousseff who was into her second four-year term was impeached for breaking fiscal and budget laws in the country. The Washington post back in 2016 stated, “She is being accused of using state-controlled banks to finance popular social programs without revealing she was doing so.” Banks were not getting enough money to give to the poorer families in the country, so they had to start using their own money to pay for the program. This is also known as pedaling. The banks in the country were left to pay the huge amounts money that was not going into the program anymore. (Simon Romero, 2016)

Corruption in Brazil

Corruption in Brazil is not a very rare thing to find. Many of the corruption instances occur within businesses in the country. An example of corruption in the brazil would be the car wash scandal back in 2014. In this scandal it was said that employees of an oil company called Petrobras was involved in different bribes with construction companies. This scandal was also reason for the Presidents Impeachment that I mentioned earlier. The clean companies act is a law which tries to prohibit the corruption that goes on in different countries but seems to be ineffective in Brazil. Lots of corruption in the country will come through fraud and also bribery as we saw here in the car wash case. At the end of the scandal many people involved in the case were sent to prison. This included former President, Lula da Silva, who was sentenced to 12 years. (Brazil corruption scandals: All you need to know, 2018) (Egil Fujikawa nes, 2011)

I believe the tough economic condition that the country finds itself in is what leads to a lot of these corruption scandals. Many people do not know how their company will do or what to do to make it better, so they turn to illegal acts to try and get an edge on different companies. With this in mind, I’m not sure why people do not think of repercussions while doing this illegal activity. The company may strive for a little while but eventually the word will get out and your company will end up being negatively affected by your actions.

Not only is Business corruption common in Brazil, so is Political corruption. There have been rumors about elected and non-elected politicians that may have deals made within the government for their own sake. These examples of corruption may show just how it effects the economy. For years this corruption has been going on and for years the economy has been terrible. I believe these are tied together. Many of the citizens in Brazil are unhappy with these politicians and their ideas, but they are forced to abide by them because of the Elections that may be fixed or rigged. When the people don’t have a voice or say in their country that is detrimental to the overall quality of the state. Brazil need to put the people first and have good leaders discover ways to help the economy surge. It is the only way to get its economy back to a stable place.

International Relationships

The relationship between Brazil and China is good. They both use each other to trade many natural resources including oil and others. They are big developing countries and import and export lots of items to different countries around the world but also trade with each other. The new President, Jair Bolsonaro, had a little bit of an anti-china stance in his campaign though. He believed that China was creating major influence on Brazil and wanted to cut down on that influence. We will see just how much and how often the two counties trade now as he takes over as President. If Brazil stopped trading with China it could potentially have a negative effect on the government.

In South America Brazil finds itself as one of the biggest developing countries but has weak parts to their government. The base of a good country relies heavily on the government and economy and for the past ten or twelve years both of those areas have been very weak. The government has been involved in major corruption on numerous occasions as talked about earlier and the economy is very poor. There are no jobs for citizens, the unemployment rate is sky high, crime in the country is high and it is clear that brazil is not where they want to be as a country right now. The change they need is for newly elected president Jair Bolsonaro to make a huge impact in the government.

If President Bolsonaro can help the three major issues of corruption, crime, and unemployment I believe the people of brazil will have his back and want to tackle more problems. Even if the progress is minor it will at least show the citizens that what he is doing is working because for the past decade there has been nothing but decline in that economy. It will be interesting to see if Bolsonaro can make the difference the country needs or add to the broken record of brazil that has been playing for the past ten-plus years.

Works Cited

1. “Brazil Corruption Scandals: All You Need to Know.” BBC News, BBC, 8 Apr. 2018, www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-35810578.
2. “Brazil | World News.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, www.theguardian.com/world/brazil.
3. “Corruption in Brazil.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 26 Nov. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Brazil.
4. Romero, Simon. “Dilma Rousseff Is Ousted as Brazil’s President in Impeachment Vote.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 31 Aug. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/world/americas/brazil-dilma-rousseff-impeached-removed-president.html.
5. “Everyday Corruption in Brazil.” The Brazil Business, thebrazilbusiness.com/article/everyday-corruption-in-brazil.
6. Pariona, Amber. “What Type of Government Does Brazil Have?” World Atlas, Worldatlas, 22 Nov. 2016, www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-type-of-government-does-brazil-have.html.