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Weekly Report - 01 August 2013 (WR-13-30)

BRAZIL: Dilma gives with one hand and takes with the other

Just days after her finance minister Guido Mantega announced a new round of budget cuts, with the important caveat that investment would not be affected, President Dilma Rousseff made a carefully choreographed appearance in São Paulo, the principal site of June’s massive national street protests, where alongside the politically damaged novice city mayor Fernando Haddad of the ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) she announced R$8.0bn (US$3.5bn) in funds for the city’s transport system (part of the R$50bn national transport ‘pact’ unveiled in response to the protests) and emphasised that the federal government was “a partner” of the country’s state and municipal governments. She also did a ‘Pope Francis’ – departing from her scheduled plans to take a walkabout in the city and, at a last minute invitation, ‘popping in’ to the headquarters of the third largest labour union in the country, the (largely sympathetic) União General de Trabalhadores (UGT).

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