Never have I seen anything so bizarre as the parliamentary vote yesterday on whether or not to impeach the Brazilian President, Dilma Rouseff. The whole event was shown live on TV and from what I am told, it was the first time ever in Brazil that there has been live TV coverage from inside their Congress building. The people of Brazil (at least the ones I have spoken to) are embarrassed - not by the result, but by the behaviour of their political representatives.
Prior to the vote, there was a 3 day long debate, so eveeryone had already had their chance to say what they thought. But when it was time to actually vote, they set up a microphone in the middle of the congress building and each congressman/woman was called up to vote in turn. Of course each one wanted to say/shout something first, although 99.9% of the comments were totally meaningless. Basically perm any three or four (or on occasions eight or nine) of the following:
I do this in the name of democracy
I do this to defend our constitution
I do this to end corruption
I do this in the name of my father who passed away last year and was a true patriot.
I do this in the name of God
I do this for my wife
I do this for my children (and they always had to name their children)
I do this for the future of our country
I do this for the next generation
I do this for my state of ..........
I do this for the poor
I do this for the people of Brazil
and the one that nearly had me falling off the chair with laughter
I do this in the name of my Aunty who looked after me when I was small
and then it was I vote YES/NO for impeachment. It didn't matter whether they were a Yes or No, they all said the same thing. It was just the chance to get on TV and "showboat" for 30 secs infront of their electorate.
Now, OK. Up to here it doesn't sound too bad. But here was the problem. There were 513 of them. Each one had to have their say and then make their vote while waving their flags or scarfs. Then they had to read out the score after every single vote. The vote itself took nearly 7 hours and was performed to the backdrop of cheers and chanting. Trust me, neither Prime Ministers Questions nor Eurovision Song Contest Voting had anything on this.
This was bureaucracy gone mad. If they had all voted on Twitter instead, they could have done this in 10 seconds.
In the end, the vote was in favour of impeachment, which means we have to go through all this again in the Senate next month. Thank goodess for small mercies. There are only 81 of them.
Tim Vickery, Brazilian based South American football expert, was on the radio last night for ostensibly a football catch-up but he felt that he just had to start with the impeachment proceedings.
He voiced very much the same thoughts as yourself, mentioning that among the "I do this for ..." that Jerusalem somehow got a mention.
South America is more corrupt than other Developing Countries? Nope. Former British colonies are less corrupt than Spanish ones? Nope.
You can look at Transparency Internationals index of corruption. You go through about 10 former British colonies before you get to the first South American one.
Plus, certain South American countries were British colonies in all but name, Argentina and Uruguay particularly. Is Argentina notably less corrupt than it's neighbours? Nope.
Brazil itself of course has nothing to do with Spain, having been a Portuguese colony.
-- Edited by Etienne on Thursday 21st of April 2016 07:17:37 PM
Etienne you have not processed my point. I was talking about countries and colonies inhabited by people of British heritage. Yes of course i'm sure the Gambia is a hell hole. But the fact is that Australia, New Zealand and Canada were inhabited by people of British heritage and are wonderful countries now.
Those that were inhabited by Spanish and for your sake Portuguese, such as Mexico, central american and south american, are countries plagued with many issues, instability and corruption.
Had things been vice versa and the spanish gone to Oceana and inhabited australia etc, would Australia be as it is now, or be like Argentina......
