Aécio: Dilma's speech was "detached from the truth"

Mines 247 – President Dilma Rousseff gave a speech "detached from the truth," assessed the national president of the PSDB party, Senator Aécio Neves (MG), this Saturday, the 22nd. According to him, there are errors and successes in the president's speech, which addressed the protests taking place in various cities across the country. A success, according to him, was calling for a national broadcast, despite the delay, and an error was in the content of her speech.

The president "reproduced exactly the type of political action that is being rejected in the streets throughout the country. She gave a speech detached from the truth, reinforcing politics as a territory distant from values ​​and reality itself," wrote the PSDB presidential pre-candidate in a statement, adding that Dilma "missed a unique opportunity to connect with the population."

According to Aécio Neves, Dilma "missed a unique opportunity to connect with the population" by choosing "to give a speech that reproduces the traditional way of doing politics in Brazil: sweeping problems under the rug, pretending that she has nothing to do with what is happening, that it is all the responsibility of others, that she only didn't do better because she wasn't allowed to."

Read below the full text of their statement, released by the PSDB:

"Old politics and the new Brazil"

By Aécio Neves, national president of the PSDB and senator (MG)

President Dilma Rousseff's speech contains both errors and successes.

The President was right to convene, even belatedly, the national radio and television network—the first truly necessary one in her administration—to present to the population and the world the Brazilian government's position on recent events.

He erred, however, in the content. He reproduced exactly the type of political action that is being rejected in the streets throughout the country. He made a speech detached from the truth, reinforcing politics as a territory distant from values ​​and reality itself.

The president missed a unique opportunity to connect with the population. To do so, she would have needed to acknowledge mistakes and responsibilities in order to then have the legitimacy to transform this extraordinary demonstration of a desire for change into fuel for a true transformation in and of the country.

However, he chose to give a speech that replicates the traditional way of doing politics in Brazil: sweeping problems under the rug, pretending that he has nothing to do with what is happening, that it is all the responsibility of others, that he only didn't do better because he wasn't allowed to.

She thus gave a speech as if the Brazilian population were made up of alienated and uninformed people. She is in the streets precisely to show that this is not the case.

The president spoke of her commitment to transparency and the fight against corruption. Meanwhile, in real-life Brazil, the same president prohibits the disclosure of her travel expenses abroad and, with the elections in mind, is once again harboring within the government the influence of people she herself had removed under suspicion of embezzlement.

As a way to try to demonstrate commitment to health, the president said that federal investments in this area have been increasing, when the whole country knows that the federal government's share of national spending in the sector has been falling sharply for 10 years, since the PT took over the government. When the whole country knows that the government worked especially hard to prevent the regulation of Amendment 29 from setting a minimum investment level of 10% in the sector for the federal sphere.

With the protests focused on public transportation, the president now says she will finally discuss the issue. Not a word about the fact that her government is acting in exactly the opposite direction: granting isolated tax breaks to serve specific interests, encouraging the purchase of individual vehicles and defending grandiose projects, such as the bullet train, to the detriment of investment in subway systems in major cities.

After spending millions on advertising to portray the federal government as the leader of stadium construction, the president now candidly claims she has nothing to do with it, reducing the resources used to financing to be paid by states and companies. Not a word about the National Treasury funds that are filling the coffers of the BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank). No comment on the obvious fact that the resources financing stadiums could be financing subways, roads, and hospitals.

But there is a positive aspect to this statement by the president.

This is the first time the government has acknowledged that projects carried out through financing should not be considered federal projects, since these are resources that will be repaid by the borrowers. This marks a new and fairer interpretation of programs such as "Luz Para Todos" (Light for All) and the PAC (Growth Acceleration Program), in which projects carried out with financing – which will be fully paid for by companies, states, and municipalities – have been presented, without any ceremony, as federal projects.

Instead of telling the country that the government didn't invest in the World Cup – as if anyone could believe that – wouldn't it be more honest to show the reasons that led the government to fight for the opportunity to host it and then invest in it?

Wouldn't it be more respectful to the millions of Brazilians who are in the streets to acknowledge the share of responsibility that your government—which, it should be noted, is not solely yours—bears in the problems faced by the population today?

Instead of offering Brazilians yet another vague letter of intent, wouldn't the president have done better to commit to concrete measures? If she had said she would instruct her party in Congress to abandon plans to strip the Public Prosecutor's Office of its powers and prevent the creation of new parties? Or, as Senator Agripino Maia rightly pointed out, if she had said she would seek out the president of the Supreme Court to express support for the conclusion of the Mensalão trial?

Those who heard the President's speech were left with the impression that it was a government just starting out, and not an administration responsible for what was – and wasn't – done in the country over the last 10 years.

Through the president's voice, the old politics spoke to the new Brazil that is in the streets. What a shame.