Eliane: It's the "boss's" fault.
Columnist Eliane Cantanhêde, from Folha de S.Paulo, takes up her political struggle and holds President Dilma responsible for what she calls the government's "defeats": the low GDP, political disarray, and the Bolsa Família program's failure.
247 – Folha columnist Eliane Cantanhêde has fully embraced her political stance and now argues that President Dilma Rousseff should be held accountable for what she calls the government's defeats. Read more:
Brazil, a wave
BRASILIA - We've seen this movie before. At the beginning of the year, Minister Guido Mantega puffs out his chest and promises a huge GDP growth. In the middle of the year, the same Mantega says it's not quite like that and revises it downwards. At the end of the year, the very same Mantega settles for a pitifully small GDP growth.
This year's GDP was projected at 4,5%, but it has fallen to 3,5%, and the new forecast will be even lower, following yesterday's cold shower when growth of only 0,6% was announced for the first quarter compared to the last quarter of 2012. The government and the market had expected 0,9%.
What's sustaining positive growth is precisely agriculture, which increased by 9,7%, offsetting a further decline in industry and a slowdown in household consumption, most likely due to inflation. Higher prices, less buying, right?
This is how the much-hyped Brazilian economy is losing its appeal, with low GDP, inflation at its peak, rising interest rates (despite all the hype), and now, the dollar soaring, the trade balance delivering one piece of bad news after another, and no answers in the fiscal area.
That wave of a great Brazil seems to be dying on the beach, while the international press sees the country under Dilma Rousseff as unpredictable, directionless, driven by an interventionist bias. And it continues to fail to make progress on structural reforms.
To this we can add a new development from 2013: the Presidential Palace is constantly clashing with Congress, where it has a huge but, apparently, very loyal allied base.
Approving the Ports Provisional Measure was already a nightmare. Now, the only way out was to include a "piece of cake" in the Basic Food Basket Provisional Measure to fulfill the promise of lowering electricity bills. A promise, remember, made on national television, with the flair of an election campaign.
In the case of GDP, Mantega is to blame. In the case of the provisional measures, Ideli is to blame. In the case of Bolsa Família, Caixa is to blame. But they all have a boss. Or should it be "bossess"?