For French Sociologist and political scientist Alain Touraine who at the moment is visiting São Paulo, in Brazil’s Southeast, Brazilian president-elect Dilma Rousseff was a creation of president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and could fall prey to the temptation of a populist system.
“I’m not necessarily optimistic about a government led by Ms Rousseff; we don’t know what’s going to happen from now onwards, the new president was invented by Lula,” said Touraine who is Director of Paris Social Sciences School of Advanced Studies.
The French political scientist also questioned the possible return of outgoing president Lula and the ruling Workers Party in 2014.
“The idea that Dilma will be looking after the chair for Lula da Silva during four years did not please me; there are no such things as an interim president in democratic systems,” he underlined.
Touraine said Brazil has a long tradition of populism and the populist threat is always present because of “the extreme social inequality in the country, and I see risks of a possible back-stepping because the ruling Workers party past is far from perfect; Lula is no authoritarian but segments of his party certainly are”.
The French professor said that Brazil has a terrible political and parties system, corrupt in all the extent of the word. However he did acknowledge that former president Henrique Fernando Cardoso, during his eight years in office, built the democratic institutions and managed a “perfect transition” on handing the presidential sash to elected Lula da Silva in 2002.
Show Comments (4)
Breno Oliveira
there is some bias
Touraine was Mr. Cardoso’s professor and also a close friend of Mr. Serra. Touraine also acted as a consultant to Fernando Henrique during the transition of power to Lula.
João da Silva
[quote]Cardoso did a great job, if you owned stock in Telefonica…Don’t you have a Sarko to deal with, Monsieur Touraine?
[/quote]
;-):D;-)8)
Kojerk
Wow…
I agree with Reggie above. By “populist”, Touraine means “not neoliberal enough”. Cardoso did a great job, if you owned stock in Telefonica…Don’t you have a Sarko to deal with, Monsieur Touraine?
Reggie
Mr. Touraine, notably understands a lot about terrible political systems and corruption in all the extents of the word after all, He’s from France. Unfortunately he doesn’t understand as much about politics as his title may suggest, instead of dictating what democratic systems should or should not look like( given the exorbitant variety of systems that are loosely called democracies), he should learn on the reasons 50 million free Brazilians chose her, besides Lula. Besides I find the BUSH-Clinton_BUSH cycle a much more degraded one. One tip, drop your european arrogance, and accept the world powers that emerge.