De VS coup tegen de democratisch gekozen Braziliaanse regering Dilma Rousseff is gelukt. Nu draait de corrupte misdadiger Temer het volk voor 20 jaar de duimschroeven aan…….. Neoliberalisme in optima forma, de financiële maffia is dik tevreden! Intussen zijn een aantal van de regeringsleden van Temer gepakt op corruptie en andere fraude, dat blijkt geen reden tot afzetting te zijn……….

Het volgende interview gepubliceerd op The Real News Network, van 15 december 2016, vond ik op Information Clearing House (ICH), onder de volgende tekst:

Brazilian
President Temer Signs Constitutional Amendment Imposing 20 Years of
Austerity

Rousseff
was ousted to shift economic policy towards neoliberalism, and now
Temer is rewarding the banks and financial investors for backing the
legislative coup, says SOAS Professor Alfredo Saad-Filho

Hier het interview van 15 december jl. in schrift:

SHARMINI
PERIES: It’s The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries, coming to
you from Baltimore. On Thursday, Brazil’s President, Michel Temer,
signed a constitutional amendment that will limit fiscal spending
over the next 20 years. The measure is highly controversial and has
sparked protests throughout the country over the last few weeks.
Critics say that the amendment commits Brazil to austerity for the
next 20 years by limiting spending regardless of population or GDP
growth. Spending increases are only connected to inflation growth.
According to a recent poll, only 24% of the population supported and
60% are opposed to it. Many also view President Temer as being
illegitimate since he came into office through a legislative coup.
That was when Workers Party President Dilma Rousseff was ousted on
accusations of having committed administrative irregularities.

Joining
us now from London to discuss this is Alfredo Saad-Filho. Alfredo is
a Professor of Political Economy at the School of Oriental and
African Studies, the University of London, and was a Senior Economic
Affairs Officer at the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development. Alfredo, thank you so much for joining us today.

ALFREDO
SAAD-FILHO: Thank you very much for having me.

SHARMINI
PERIES: Alfredo, let’s start by giving us some detail of the
constitutional amendment that Brazil is now implementing, that’s been
approved after being afloat for a few weeks now. What will it do?

ALFREDO
SAAD-FILHO: This constitutional amendment, as you explained in your
introduction, limits government spending in all areas by the Federal
Executive, by the Legislature and the judicial system to spending
this current year plus the rate of inflation for the next 20 years.
This is what it is intended to do: the idea is to limit the
government deficit and to provide credibility to economic policy in
Brazil.

SHARMINI
PERIES: Now, there’s been some controversy or reports that this is
also about social spending, that it freezes social spending
regardless of GDP growth. Is that the case, and what impact will it
have if it is?

ALFREDO
SAAD-FILHO: This is exactly what it does. Social spending is the area
of the government budget that has been growing the fastest because
Brazil is a country that is aging very rapidly. Population growth has
stalled for the last 20 years or so, so the population is getting
older, and demands on the social security system have been
increasing. Which is also a peculiarity of the Brazilian
Constitution, that it is very progressive in the social realm. It has
a very… a good social charter providing education, universal
education, providing a universal health system. And this is
incompatible with the now liberal economic policies that this
administration is trying to implement. And in the attempt to break
this impasse, the government has blamed the fiscal deficit on social
spending and tried to limit the spending of the government as a whole
as a way to stall the growth, suspend the growth, of public education
and public health in Brazil.

SHARMINI
PERIES: Now, why would the Temer government, who is in a very tenuous
position as far as popularity is concerned, particularly given that
he was not elected — and a measure being introduced here and passed
now is also very unpopular — why would he be throwing himself into
such a vulnerability as far as what’s happening on the streets and so
on, if he is looking like he wants to remain the president here?

ALFREDO
SAAD-FILHO: Because this is what they were trying to achieve by
removing President Rousseff from office: trying to shift economic
policy in Brazil towards neo-liberalism. You will notice that what is
not included in the ceiling for fiscal spending is the interest that
is paid on the domestic public debt. So the banks are protected —
the financial investors are protected — but the retirees, but the
people who have illnesses, but the children in the public school
system, they are not protected, and their services will be limited,
so that the government should have enough money to pay the banks.
This is exactly what is happening in Brazil at the moment, which is a
political priority and President Temer is paying those who supported
him.

SHARMINI
PERIES: And the other question is why was this done through a
constitutional amendment, rather than a piece of legislation?

ALFREDO
SAAD-FILHO: Because the public expenditure in health and education
and the public pensions paid by the State, they are all set in the
Constitution. So you would need something of that legal status in
order to limit those outlays.

SHARMINI
PERIES: All right, then the people are protesting on the streets.
What do you think the short-term and the long-term effects of this
measure will be on Brazilians?

ALFREDO
SAAD-FILHO: In the long term, evidently it’s a decline of the size of
the State. You will notice the absurdity. The education budget is 33
billion reals at the moment. The health budget is 94 billion reals.
The total fiscal deficit is 170 billion reals. But the government
provides in subsidy each year 200 billion reals. So subsidies for
large companies, subsidies for entrepreneurs are fine. The payment of
the interest on the domestic debt of the government, that is about 7%
of GDP — that is fine. But education and health, they have to be
limited.

So
this is the reason why there has been a lot of resistance against
this particular measure. And President Temer, whose popularity is now
stuck in single digits — he is less popular than President Rousseff
was at the end of her administration — President Temer is trying to
present this constitutional amendment as a political victory. But it
may well be that this is really the end of his administration.

SHARMINI
PERIES: Well, how is it that a very unpopular president with an
unpopular Congress, with a very unpopular constitutional amendment,
gets it all through? I guess he’s putting his political life on the
line here because of the investigations that have also been underway
and there’s been some determination on all of that. So it doesn’t
look like he’s actually going to be able to even run in the next
election. Would you explain all of that to us?

ALFREDO
SAAD-FILHO: He cannot run in the next presidential elections that are
scheduled for 2018 because he has been judged guilty in a case of
corruption, and therefore rendered ineligible. So, one of the many
paradoxes of the political situation in Brazil at the moment is that
the current president cannot run for his own office in the future. It
is absurd.

Now,
President Temer is in a very tenuous position, but he does have a
majority support in Congress, which is a very unpopular Congress,
with a large number of members of Congress being accused of
corruption and other misdemeanors. Now, even though the political
system is highly unpopular, the President is there to deliver
something that was promised when he was leading the conspiracy to
overthrow President Rousseff. This is what he is trying to do, and
any hesitation on his part will lead to — almost inevitably lead to
— his removal from office.

Now,
notice the date: if President Temer is removed from office or forced
to resign before the 31st of December — this year — then there will
be direct elections for a president in Brazil. If he resigns or is
forced to step down next year, then there will not be direct
elections and Congress will elect someone indirectly to complete the
administration until 2018. So there is a race going on. This
administration is extremely fragile, and if the president steps down,
there will be elections, but my bet is that he will not step down
right now. He will wait at least until the end of the month, try to
coast until the beginning of the next year, so that Congress will be
able to elect someone that they trust, while in elections you do not
know what you’re going to get.

SHARMINI
PERIES: Right. Alfredo, there is a large number of legislative and
Senate lawmakers that are being investigated at the moment for their
corruption, or accusations of corruption and so on, and in an article
in The Globe and Mail a few months ago, they put this number at a
very high rate — over 360 people in the Legislative Branch being
investigated. This pits a really peculiar situation in terms of
governance in Brazil with the courts and the legal system against the
Legislative Branch. What do we make of this and what can we expect in
the next few months?

ALFREDO
SAAD-FILHO: Corruption is the way in which the Brazilian political
system works. The law says that financing for political campaigns and
political parties has to follow a particular route, but that route is
insufficient to support very expensive campaigns that have been
taking place in the country recently. So a lot of the funding for
politicians and for candidates has to go through illegal channels.
This is absolutely well-known in the country. It has always been
well-known, but it has become a major political issue right now.

The
judicial system has been pursuing a number of leads of corruption,
but it is very, very important not to have any illusions about what
is going on. This is a dispute between groups, between cliques, to
see which one is the most prominent power in the Republic — and at
the moment the most prominent power is the judiciary. There are no
controls essentially over the judiciary in Brazil. It is divided
within itself. Every day there are newspaper headlines about fights
between members of the Supreme Court and between judges at the lower
level than the Supreme Court itself. And they fight between
themselves, they fight with the lawmakers, particularly in the Senate
at the moment, and they all try to push President Temer to do their
bidding. It is an extremely confusing, chaotic, even political
situation where we see, at the same time, the disintegration of
democracy in the country, and the collapse of the Constitution. It
does not look good, and I suspect that the Brazilian Constitution
will not survive for very long.

SHARMINI
PERIES: All right. Alfredo, I thank you so much for joining us today,
and we’ll be following this over the next few months, and I hope you
join us again very soon. Thank you.

ALFREDO
SAAD-FILHO: Thank you so much.

SHARMINI
PERIES: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

Alfredo
Saad-Filho is
Professor of Political Economy at the School of Oriental and African
Studies (SOAS), University of London, and was a senior economic
affairs officer at the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development. He has degrees in Economics from the Universities of
Brasilia (Brazil) and London (SOAS), and has taught in universities
and research institutions in Brazil, Canada, Japan, Mozambique,
Switzerland and the UK. His research interests include the political
economy of development, industrial policy, neoliberalism, democracy,
alternative economic policies, Latin American political and economic
development, and inflation and stabilisation.

Voor meer berichten n.a.v. het bovenstaande, zoals die met Rousseff en Temer, klik op de betreffende labels, die u onder dit bericht terg kan vinden, dit geldt niet voor de labels, Saad-Filho en Peries.