Brazil & Southern Cone - January 2014 (ISSN 1741-4431)

Six of the 12 stadia due to host World Cup matches missed Fifa’s deadline of 31 December. Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, complained in an interview with the Swiss newspaper 24 Heure that Brazil’s preparations for the tournament were the most behind schedule of any host nation since he started at the organisation in 1975. President Dilma Rousseff, a recent convert to Twitter, posted a rebuttal stating Brazilians were confident all would be well and that her country would host “the Cup of Cups”.

So far this year four workers have died in accidents at stadium construction sites in Manaus and São Paulo, where the opening match, on 12 June, is due to be held. Natal, Manaus and Porto Alegre are expected to be completed at some point this month; Cuiabá’s Arena Pantanal is due to be ready in February and Curitiba’s Arena de Baixada in March. São Paulo’s Itaquerão will only be ready in mid-April. Though the Jornal do Brasil ran an editorial telling Brazilians not to listen to the ‘mediocre’ Blatter; an on-line poll in the tabloid O Dia found an overwhelming majority sympathised with his comments.

Separately, the government issued a thinly-veiled threat to the main domestic airlines, Gol and Tam to avoid ‘abusive’ prices during the competition. The cabinet chief, Gleisi Hoffman, due to step down shortly to run for office in her home state of Paraná (capital city, Curitiba), said the government would consider allowing foreign airlines to operate routes in the country if it deemed the fares excessive. Hoffman also warned the government would use its powers to prevent hotels charging outrageous prices. The government expects 600,000 foreigners and 3m Brazilians to travel during the tournament.

As for the question of opening Brazilian skies to foreign competition, aviation experts quoted in the local media expressed scepticism that such a complex procedure could be carried out at such short notice. “The logistics of it are complicated,” Carlos Ebner, the president of the International Air Transport Association in Brazil, said. “We’re not talking about buses here. The airlines would need at least three or four months in order to get organised.

Dilma takes charge

Stung by the latest Fifa complaints and concerned about potential lasting damage to Brazil’s reputation, President Dilma Rousseff on 8 January summoned nine ministers to a three-hour meeting to launch ‘operation fine [tooth] comb’ to deal with the variety of problems threatening the June-July 2014 World Cup football tournament.

Apart from the readiness of the stadiums, the president’s two main concerns are security for the tournament, and the strength of the local communications network - Rousseff does not want international visitors leaving with the impression that Brazil is a ‘sub-standard’ country because they couldn’t get wi-fi signals in the stadiums. Following an interrogation, the nine ministers were told to come up with responses in 24 hours. After that she was to meet the governors of the 12 host states - in two groups of six - better for the micro-managing president to get into the nitty gritty of the details.

Rousseff doesn’t suffer fools gladly and according to local reports Civil Aviation Secretary Moreira Franco bore the brunt of her sharp tongue, after he sought to downplay concerns about the ability of Brazil’s creaking international and regional airports to cope with the massive tourist influx. Along with Moreira Franco, the following ministers attended the meeting at the Planalto presidential palace: Defence Minister Celso Amorim, Mining & Energy Minister Edison Lobão, Ports Secretary Antônio Henrique da Silveira, Planning Minister Miriam Belchior, Sports Minister Aldo Rebelo, Cities Minister Aguinaldo Ribeiro and the minister of the presidency, Gleisi Hoffmann.

• And if they don’t win?

In his interview with the Swiss paper 24 Heure, Sepp Blatter said he expected there would be protests during the World Cup, although not on the scale seen during last year’s Confederations Cup. This tallies with the opinion of most newspaper columnists in Brazil, but as Rafael Alcadapani, an academic from the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) points out, the great imponderable will be how Brazilians react if their team exits the tournament early, leaving the country to pick up the bill for a very expensive party at which they are no longer welcome.