Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff greeted the Olympic flame in Brazil on Tuesday, promising not to allow a raging political crisis, which could see her suspended within days, to spoil the Rio de Janeiro Games.
Rousseff said they would be “the most successful Olympic Games in history.”
“We are experiencing political instability. We are going through a very difficult period, truly critical in the country’s history and in the history of democracy,” Rousseff said in the capital, Brasilia.
Photo: AFP
However, “Brazil will provide the very best reception for athletes and foreign visitors, because we have created the conditions for this.”
The flame, which arrived in a small lantern from the ancient Greek site of Olympia, via Switzerland, was transferred to Brazil’s Olympic torch featuring waves of tropical colors. The torch is to be carried in a relay by 12,000 people through 329 cities, ending in Rio’s Maracana Stadium on Aug. 5 for the opening ceremony.
Brazilian Air Force jets roared overhead in a clear-blue sky to write “Rio 2016” and the five Olympic rings in their vapor trails. Then there were cheers as the first relay runner, double Olympic gold winning women’s volleyball captain Fabiana Claudino, set off.
Twelve-year-old Syrian refugee Hanan Daqqah, who arrived in Brazil’s biggest city, Sao Paulo, with her family last year, was also among the first 10 torchbearers.
However, political and economic turmoil overshadowed the ceremony ahead of South America’s first-ever Olympics.
Rousseff will be suspended from office for six months next week if the Brazilian Senate votes on Wednesday or Thursday next week to open an impeachment trial, meaning that Tuesday could have been one of her final major public events as president.
She is accused of illegally manipulating government accounts, but says she is the victim of a coup mounted by Brazilian Vice President Michel Temer, who would replace her if she is suspended.
In a brief speech at the torch-lighting ceremony, Rousseff said the relay would put Brazil’s beauty on display, but she also laced her comments with references to her fight for political survival.
“I am certain that a country whose people know how to fight for their rights and to protect their democracy is a country where the Olympics will have great success in the coming months,” she said.
A swarm of police jogged alongside the first torch runners, possibly to separate them from protesters in the crowd who held up banners, including one reading: “No to the coup.”
“Unfortunately, we’re not here to celebrate this great party,” protester Rita Andrade, an artist, told reporters. “We’re asking for help for our democracy, which is bleeding right now.”
The impeachment trial and a definitive senate vote on Rousseff’s fate could take months, during which time the 68-year-old would be on half pay, still living at the presidential residence, although ejected from the executive offices. If she is not cleared, Temer would stay in power until the next elections in 2018.
Rousseff has vowed to “fight to the end.”
She hopes to persuade senators that the accounting, which she allegedly used to mask the depth of Brazil’s economic crisis, do not amount to an impeachable offense.
Rousseff says the charges are trumped up by her political enemies.
Given the makeup of the Senate, a simple majority vote to suspend her next week looks almost certain. However, a two-thirds majority is needed to remove her completely from office, making the final outcome harder to predict.
Rousseff, a one-time Marxist guerrilla who was tortured by the then-military regime in the 1970s, has all but lost the ability to govern in recent months.
Even if she survived impeachment, she would have trouble regaining authority.
However, her Workers’ Party, which has dominated the nation’s politics since 2003, is still fighting to prevent impeachment from turning into a nationwide shift in voting trends.
Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Rousseff’s mentor, hopes to run for president again in 2018 — or even sooner in special snap elections that many in Brazil want to happen this year.
Polls indicate Lula would likely be one of several frontrunners, not including Temer.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS