Yearbook 2016

Brazil. The year became one of the most turbulent in Brazil’s modern political history. According to countryaah, the current population of Brazil is 212,559,428.President Dilma Rousseff was accused of violating budget laws by covering deficits in the state budget with loans from state banks. After a 21-hour marathon debate, on May 12, the Senate, like the House of Representatives a month earlier, decided to suspend the president to initiate a state-of-the-art lawsuit against her. Rousseff did not resign immediately but anticipated the outcome of the judicial process. Vice President Michel Temer temporarily took over the presidential post. On August 31, the Senate then voted to permanently dismiss Rousseff, and Temer was installed as president for the remainder of her term. However, she was not deprived of her political rights, which in principle meant that she could stand in the 2018 elections.

Brazil Population 2016

In the background, it depicted the corruption scandal within the state oil company Petrobras that persecuted the ruling Labor Party (PT) for several years. The charges against Rouseff, however, did not apply to herself being compromised with corruption. However, her actions were called into question when she tried to appoint the former president (2003-11) and party colleague José Inácio Lula da Silva to head the government staff to protect him from prosecution – revealed by a secretly recorded telephone conversation between the two. When it came to budget maneuvering, Rousseff argued in his defense that it was a standard approach. Ironically, Temer himself risked a judicial process because of the same sort of manipulation of the state budget that Rousseff was accused of. Leaving the presidential palace in Brazil, she asserted that the entire process was politically conditioned and equated it with a coup d’état aimed at preventing compromising discoveries about her political opponents in the Petrobras scandal and partly stopping the government’s social policy efforts and favoring the private sector. A published recording of a conversation between Temer’s Planning Minister Romero Jucá and a former head of one of Petrobras’s subsidiaries seemed to give her the right: in the conversation, Jucá clearly stated that national law would be a way for involved politicians to avoid prosecution. Rousseff – the first woman in the presidential post ever – also claimed a woman-hostile feature of the process, and Tamer’s newly-appointed government also became the first since 1985 to consist entirely of white men.

  • Abbreviation Finder: Check to see how the 3-letter abbreviation of BRA stands for the nation of Brazil in geography.

This was further complicated by the fact that Temer himself and several of his closest associates were subject to investigations by the Supreme Court. In addition to accusations of budget manipulation, he also figured in the investigation into the Petrobras scandal and at the same time was investigated for illegally using $ 12.8 million to fund his election campaign in 2014. Corruption charges were targeted at nearly 60% of congressmen who voted for Rousseff’s provision. Marcelo Odebrecht, the head of a construction company, named 130 congressmen involved in the scandal in the prosecution hearing, and on October 19, Eduardo Cunha, the House Speaker and one of the leaders in the judicial process against Rousseff, was arrested by police for corruption and money laundering.

The whole political drama led to a strong polarization in Brazilian society. Protests and street demonstrations against Temer succeeded with millions of participants during the motto “Out with Temer!” (Fora Temer!) And was met by counter-demonstrations in support of Temer: a home-made bomb was thrown by supporters of Temer against the presidential palace during a demonstration in March. Most foreign reactions were cautious, with the exception of the region’s left-wing governments who condemned what they called a coup, and Venezuela broke off diplomatic relations with Brazil in protest. However, the municipal elections on October 30 showed a significant right-wing twist on domestic opinion. PT lost most of the important municipalities while the center-right parties went ahead.

Temer’s first major challenge was Brazil’s economic situation, which worsened during the year and predicted negative economic growth for the second consecutive year and inflation of 10%. In October, Congress approved a austerity package that would cut the state budget by nearly $ 16 billion a year.

At the beginning of the year, concerns about the spread of the mosquito virus transmitted by mosquitoes increased and are suspected of causing microcephaly in newborn infants. According to thereligionfaqs, Brazil was the most affected country in Latin America and just before the opening of the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games on August 5, 1,700 cases were found. However, a major threat to the tourists during the Olympic Games was security, which was not primarily about the risks of terrorist attacks but about the everyday crime in the country’s most violent city. About 85,000 police officers were mobilized to ensure visitor safety, and no more serious incidents were recorded.

October

Record unemployment during the summer

October 30

Unemployment in June to August was 14.4 percent, the highest figure since measurements in three-month periods were introduced in 2012. The number of deaths in covid-19 now amounts to over 158,000, the second highest figure in the world (after the United States).

September

Bolsonaro at the UN: “Defamation campaign against Brazil”

September 22

President Jair Bolsonaro claims that Brazil is being subjected to a “brutal” international defamation campaign about the destruction of huge natural areas in the Amazon and the Pantanal. In a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York, Bolsonaro claims that international institutions with “shady interests” together with “unpatriotic” Brazilian groups are trying to undermine the government and the country itself. According to Bolsonaro, the fires are mainly caused by indigenous peoples engaged in traditional agriculture, while ecologists say that large-scale agriculture and land speculation are behind the fires in the Amazon. The fires in the Amazon are more this year than 2019, but the area that has burned is still slightly smaller. However, the number of fires in the Pantanal has already broken records, despite the fact that three months remain of the year. Just over a tenth of the area, which is the world’s largest tropical wetland, has burned. In his 2019 UN speech, Bolsonaro claimed that lying media spread a false image of the fires in the Amazon.