Dilma to CNN: "Football is not a war, it's a game"

247 – As host of the World Cup watched by more than 3 billion people worldwide, President Dilma Rousseff granted an exclusive interview to the American network CNN, broadcast this Thursday, June 10th, to journalist Christiane Amanpour. The president said she feels "sad" about the 7-1 defeat of the Brazilian National Team against Germany on Tuesday, June 8th, but reminded everyone that "football is not a war, it's a game".

Dilma defended "a renewal" in Brazilian football, in order to allow the main players to remain playing for national clubs. She was questioned about her time fighting against the Brazilian military dictatorship, when she was tortured. "You discover that you have to resist and that only you can defeat yourself." Follow along:

Exclusive interview with President Dilma on CNN:

Journalist Christiane Amanpour: Madam President, welcome to our program.

President Dilma Rousseff: It's a pleasure for me, Christiane, to speak with you.

Journalist: There were many demonstrations before this World Cup. And suddenly, during the World Cup, people were ecstatic, saying it was the best World Cup ever, there were so many goals. Do you think this defeat will shape national sentiment?

President: Look, I don't believe that because we experienced a World Cup. We Brazilians know, and all the fans who came here, we know that it was a World Cup that... that went peacefully, with a lot of joy, with all the infrastructure working. In fact, it's very sad that we've reached this point and suffered a defeat, it's very sad. Now, this doesn't negate the national team's previous struggle, nor everything that has been done and is being done. After all, football has a characteristic: it's made of victories and defeats. Being able to overcome defeat, I think that's a characteristic of a great national team and a great country.

Journalist: I wanted to ask you, Madam President, if you think the absence of Neymar and Thiago Silva contributed to this defeat.

Madam President: Two hundred million Brazilians are experts and offer their opinions on the National Team. I believe, not as someone who deeply understands football, that this had a significant effect on the National Team. Now, faced with defeat, we must have an attitude of being able to learn from it and, at the same time, overcome it. Therefore, I am certain that Brazil and all Brazilian fans will persevere in the coming days and demonstrate that we are capable of overcoming this adversity. But we also have to consider one thing: in every aspect, Brazil hosted a World Cup that I believe was, in fact, one of the best World Cups, and we owe this, in large part, to the Brazilian people, to their capacity for hospitality and for welcoming fans from around the world, and I hope – and I am certain – that the whole world will recognize this fact.

Journalist: There have been many questions, not only around the world but also here in Brazil, about the cost of the stadiums, about the 14 billion dollars spent on these stadiums, compared to the 4 billion spent in South Africa in 2010. People were saying: why don't we have better schools, better education, or better transportation, better infrastructure? During the World Cup, they were excited because this has been an excellent World Cup and most of the protests have been peaceful. Are you concerned, do you believe there's a possibility that these protests will start again after the final, that people will wonder what those billions of dollars were spent on if we didn't even reach the finals?

Madam President: Look, in the states, 8 billion reais were spent on the stadiums, more or less 4 billion dollars. This stadium expenditure was financed by the government. Between 2010 and 2013, we spent 1 trillion and 700 billion reais on education and health, across all three levels of government, which is approximately 850 billion dollars. So comparing 4 billion dollars with 850 billion dollars is absolutely disproportionate. We don't spend... because the rest of the expenses remain for Brazil, not just for the World Cup. And the stadiums aren't just for the World Cup either. Airports exist because, from 2003 to 2013, we went from 33 million passengers traveling by plane in Brazil to 113 million in 2013. You see... we are building airports for ourselves, because there is a huge number of Brazilians who, in this decade, discovered that they could travel by plane because they had the income to pay for the ticket.

Regarding stadiums, this is a meeting place for the population, and when I said that Brazilian football needs to be renewed, what did I mean by that? I meant that Brazil can no longer continue exporting players. Exporting players means not having the biggest attraction for filling stadiums. What is the biggest attraction for a country that loves football like ours to go to a football game? Seeing the stars. There are stars in Brazil who have been abroad for a long time. So, renewing Brazilian football means realizing that a country with this passion for football has every right to have its players here and not have them exported.

Journalist: Madam President, some people have said that Brazil and the World Cup, this is Brazil's fantasy. This is the Brazil one would like to have. To organize a fabulous World Cup, despite the terrible defeat of its national team. But this is not the real Brazil. In the real Brazil, people are in the streets, they want better sanitation, better education, better services. This is happening at a time when you are running for re-election. Do you now feel the political challenge, with this defeat, and that after the competition you will be under pressure to show results?

President: First, I think that the Brazil they are describing has nothing to do with the real Brazil. The real Brazil is a Brazil that, from 2003 to today, has lifted 36 million people out of poverty and brought 42 million people into the middle class. Forty-two million people, to put that into perspective, is equivalent to Argentina, a nearby and quite populous country. This was achieved in a decade. These people who have reached the middle class truly want better education and better healthcare. We are making immense efforts in this process.

Journalist: Madam President, you speak of lifting 36 million people out of poverty. This is a great triumph for Brazil. And it is obviously the reason why people still have aspirations. They want to improve even more. What is your response to the one million people who took to the streets last year and to the people who still say they have aspirations, despite what you have already done? On the other hand, Madam President, Brazil's incredible economic growth of the last decade has slowed and continues to be slow. What will you do? Will you need to find a new economic model to achieve development?

Madam President: Look, our growth has slowed down due to the violent crisis that began in the world in 2008. From 2008 to 2014, around 60 million jobs were lost worldwide. In Brazil, even so, we managed to face this crisis while maintaining a high level of employment. We created 11 million jobs during that same period. Indeed, the world is going through a difficult time. In our case, we have made an immense effort to maintain growth rates, and one of these efforts concerns the investments we make in infrastructure. I believe that we will enter a new cycle of development in Brazil. If the first was based on growth with social inclusion and macroeconomic stability, the second cycle will have to be based on improving our productivity, and therefore our competitiveness. We, as a country, must invest heavily in education. Education takes care of two things: ensuring that those who have changed their living conditions and income have this gain permanently. Education guarantees that. Secondly, we need to enter the economy of innovation, growth, and added value. We are a country with a well-developed agriculture, industry, and service sector. Therefore, we must ensure quality employment and invest in logistical, energy, and socio-urban infrastructure.

Journalist: How serious is the problem of corruption for this country and for this nation?

President: I believe this is a fundamental issue in the country. I defend, and my entire life demonstrates this, I defend zero tolerance for corruption, and this is not just... it can't just be a presidential statement. It has to result in institutional changes. In the federal public sector, we created a Transparency Portal. All expenses, all purchases, all investments made by the federal government appear on the internet portal in less than 24 hours. We created the Comptroller General of the Union and gave the Comptroller General of the Union the power to investigate and create all mechanisms for imposing best practices within the Administration. Many acts of corruption were uncovered by the Comptroller General of the Union. We gave full autonomy to the Federal Police to investigate corruption crimes. Ninety percent of the corruption that comes to light in Brazil has been investigated by the Federal Police, which is a federal government agency.

Journalist: You promised to make corruption a crime, not just a minor offense. Has this been done yet?

President: Yes, all of them. Not only did we do that, but now... because in Brazil there was a practice where only the corrupter paid for the corruption. Today, both sides, both the corrupter and the corrupted, pay before the Justice system, which I think is a great improvement because one cannot exist without the other.

Journalist: Madam President, you have a phenomenal life story. After the break, I'd like to talk about it.

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Journalist: Welcome back to our program. You are the first female president of Brazil, a country of over 200 million people, the engine of Latin America – the country's economy is by far the largest compared to the rest of the continent. Did you always dream of being president?

President: No, I never dreamed of being president.

Journalist: Your personal history actually suggests the opposite, because you were an urban guerrilla fighter in the 60s, fighting and resisting the military dictatorship. Did you dream of being a kind of Robin Hood?

President: No. No, no. It's very difficult to live in a dictatorship. A dictatorship limits your dreams. When you don't have the right to expression or organization, any act of dissent becomes an act of opposition. In Brazil, the right to strike was seen as an offense to the regime. The demonstrations that today we... with which we coexist peacefully, were grounds for persecution, killing, torture. So, in my youth, I fought against the dictatorship; I was a product of that time. I am very proud to have fought because it's not easy, it's not easy... the climate of a dictatorship is a climate that corrodes, that corrupts people in the sense of corrupting their capacity to resist.

Journalist: You were arrested and held in prison for three years. And you were tortured. Can you talk about that?

Madam President: I was arrested in the 70s and spent three years in a prison in São Paulo, which has since been demolished. It's an experience where you learn that two things are necessary: ​​resistance and... and you realize that only you yourself can defeat yourself. Not that it's easy to endure torture, it isn't, and you only endure torture if you deliberately deceive yourself, saying: a little more I can endure, a little more I can endure, and so you go on, and go on, and go on. Torture cannot defeat you, adversity cannot take away your will to live, and you cannot be contaminated by what the torturer thinks of you.

Journalist: What did they do to you, ma'am?

Madam President: What they did in Brazil to everyone who was arrested was: electric shock; something called "pau-de-arara," which is difficult to explain to you, a way of hanging people by their arms and legs; and a lot of electric shock. The worst was the electric shock. It's the most... it's a pain that walks. The pain inflicted by one person on another is unforgivable, barbaric; whoever does this has lost human values, everything we have achieved by leaving the caves and rising to the condition of civilized beings. Torture is a negation of that, a negation of the other. Perhaps the worst form of negation. That's why we cannot accept, anywhere in the world, the occurrence of torture, under any pretext. I have never seen a torture trial that didn't destroy the institution that practices it. All torture trials, historically, have destroyed those who practiced torture. It is extremely serious for the West to backtrack on this issue.

Journalist: How has this shaped your worldview?

Madam President: How did I construct my worldview?

You know, there's only one way for torture not to contaminate you. It can't lead you to absorb anger against those who practice it, hatred against those who practice it. You can't let that get inside you; it has to stay external, it has to stay in the physical pain. It can't transform into a motivation of feeling, of worldview, and of your... I would say, of your ideology, your culture, your way of seeing the world. Now, I'll tell you something, above all, there's something that I think torture made me experience intensely: the absolute certainty that we defeated, in Brazil, those who practiced it. The defeat isn't a personal defeat, it's not against A, B, or C. We defeated, in Brazil, the structure that practiced torture, and that was the dictatorship. By building democracy and building with standards that respect human rights... because in Brazil we have, today, this lost love for democracy. I think that was the great gain.

Journalist: I can see the passion with which you speak about this. And your personal story is impressive. There is a lot of criticism today of the Brazilian police, that they are among the most lethal in the region, and that in 2012 around 2 people were tortured and killed by the Brazilian police. This seems to be a bad legacy of the kind of torture, dictatorship, and lack of the rule of law that you fought against. Can you change that?

President: This is perhaps one of Brazil's greatest challenges... The fight against crime cannot be waged using the methods of criminals. This often happens, and we also cannot leave the Brazilian prison system untouched. Therefore, there needs to be interaction between the federal Executive branch and the police forces, and the police are state police forces, because in the Brazilian Constitution, the responsibility for public security lies with the states. I believe we will have to review this, review the Constitution. Why? Because this is an issue that must involve the federal and state Executive branches, the state and federal judiciaries, because there is also an immense number of prisoners in subhuman conditions in prisons. This is one of the most serious issues in Brazil. In some places, we have achieved great progress.

Journalist: And finally, speaking of the rule of law, you harshly criticized the United States government because of the espionage or the revelations of Edward Snowden. You were spied on, millions of Brazilians were spied on. You reconciled with President Obama. Are relations good again? Is the issue resolved, or do you still have a problem with the United States and the Obama administration regarding this?

President: Look, I don't believe that the responsibility for... for the espionage practices lies solely with the Obama administration. I think it's a process that has been unfolding since September 11th. What we didn't accept, and continue not to accept, is the fact that the Brazilian government, Brazilian companies, and Brazilian citizens were being spied on, because this directly affects Brazilian human rights, especially the right to privacy and freedom of expression. So we raised this issue with the Obama administration because, at the time, what we told them was that every reciprocal act between Brazil and the United States, which are major strategic partners, would be compromised by revelations that we had no control over, that we didn't know existed, and that we wanted two things: a guarantee that it wouldn't happen again and the fact that someone had to take responsibility and tell us that it wouldn't happen. At that time, the Obama administration was in the process of addressing this problem... this issue of international espionage, and was not in a position to respond to us. Since they were unable to respond to us, we didn't take any further action... for example, I was going to pay a visit and I didn't because of that. This didn't imply any rupture with the Obama administration. It simply meant putting our cards on the table and saying, "Look, this is impossible." Today I believe they have taken several steps.

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Journalist: Thank you, I would just like to ask one more question for the final segment of the program. Finally, Madam President, Chancellor Merkel and you are the two most powerful female presidents in the world today. What is it like to be a female president? And what will you say to Chancellor Merkel now that her team has reached the World Cup final?

President: Congratulations. I want to congratulate Chancellor Merkel on her victory because football has a characteristic: it's a game that allows the best of human activity to emerge. First, it's a game that involves cooperation; people have to cooperate. Second, it involves training; people have to train. In football and in life, if you don't strive, if you don't work, you won't succeed. It implies something that I think is fundamental and that is an education for all of us: fair play, knowing how to win and knowing how to lose. When you lose, you have to congratulate your opponent. It's not a war, it's a game, and that's why football is so captivating, because it also shows the beauty of individual human initiative at various moments, even though it's a game of cooperation. So I want to congratulate Angela Merkel and tell the Chancellor that her team played very well. And congratulations to her.

Journalist: It's different being a woman President. Do you do things differently?

Madam President: I think that even in our world, it's viewed differently. Women who are political leaders are seen as tough, very tough, cold women, surrounded by gentle men. Neither one nor the other is true. We, as leaders, as presidents or as chancellors, are women fulfilling the role of women. I always want to believe that our feminine perspective has a part that is to perceive that you govern for people and not for things. Not that men necessarily do differently, but it's certain that women know that people are also feelings and emotions, in addition to thoughts, in addition to rationality. I think that's a fundamental difference.

Journalist: President Rousseff, thank you very much for your participation.