Brazilian government blighted by scandal and weak economy

Standing on a truck on Avenida Paulista, adorned with banners calling for an end to corruption, an activist shouts a familiar refrain to thousands of protesters gathered on Sao Paulo's main thoroughfare: "Worse than the actions of the bad is the silence of the good!"

The demonstration in early April followed another in March in which more than 1m people took to the streets.

Popular opposition to the government of President Dilma Rousseff is increasing, provoked by the scandal at Petrobras, the state-owned oil company, in which politicians, mostly from the ruling coalition, are accused of colluding with company officials and contractors in a vast bribery scheme. Last month, the company reported R$6bn ($2bn) in losses directly related to corruption.

Underlying the anger at corruption is a slow realisation among Brazilians that the economy has ground to a halt and is slipping into recession. Economists say the slowdown is partly because of the fall in global commodity prices and the depreciation of the real against the dollar. But a series of miscalculations by Ms Rousseff's government in her first term are also to blame.

A central bank survey of economists at the end of April predicted inflation would end this year at 8.25 per cent, well above the central bank's target range of 6.5 per cent, and economic growth would decline by 1.1 per cent against a year earlier.

"The reality is that because all Latam governments are facing exchange rate depreciations and austerity, all of them are paying the price in terms of popularity levels," says Bernardo Wjuniski in the Sao Paulo office of Medley Global Advisors, which is owned by the FT.

For Ms Rousseff, the fallout has been harsh. As recently as March, 2013, two years into her first term in office, Ms Rousseff was one of the most popular presidents in the world. At that time, 65 per cent of Brazilians thought she was doing a good or excellent job.

In March this year, however, this situation had reversed, with 62 per cent seeing her doing a bad or terrible job and only 13 per cent as good or excellent.

Weakening support was reflected in her re-election last year by a very narrow margin. Corresponding congressional elections eroded her base, so that, where in the past her Workers' Party, the PT, had been able to command a majority, now she is being forced to share power.

Her main coalition partner, the PMDB, now controls a triumvirate of powerful positions in congress.

With the Petrobras scandal rumbling on, the PT's former treasurer Joao Vaccari Neto has been arrested and charged with corruption relating to the scandal, accusations he denies.

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Many PMDB figures are also accused, including the speakers of both houses, Renan Calheiros, leader of the senate, and Eduardo Cunha, leader of the lower house. They have denied involvement.

"With unprecedented control over the Rousseff government, the PMDB - the party of both leaders of Congress and the vice-president - opposes the president's removal," Eurasia Group, a research firm said in a note.

Other commentators also counsel against the upheaval that an impeachment might bring.

With the PT's 12-year hegemony on the wane, an impeachment could spark a power struggle that could threaten Brazil's hard-won political stability, Luiz Carlos Mendonca de Barros, founder of investment house Quest and a former president of Brazil`s development bank BNDES, wrote in newspaper Valor Economico.

Rather than plunging headlong into the crisis that would be created by an impeachment, he said, Brazil should use this moment to debate what reforms are needed.

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Jean Wyllys: Gay MP is strident voice of the new left

In 2005, Jean Wyllys became the first openly gay man to enter Brazil's Big Brother reality TV show. He went on to win and in 2010 he became a congressmen. Today, he is a strident voice of the new left.

"Mainstream politics has always occupied itself with issues such as the economy and international relations. Themes such as minority rights, the environment, water - these questions were considered of lesser importance," he says.

Rescued from poverty by a foundation that provided schooling to talented children from poor families, he learnt his politics in the leftist pastoral movement of the Catholic church. He went on to become a journalist and university professor in Salvador, Bahia.

Curious about the impact of programmes such as Big Brother on society, he entered the show's fifth Brazilian season to "study" it, he says.

The country has a very low reading rate, so such TV programmes have a big effect on how people think, he says.

Brazil's centre-left ruling Workers' party governments have created a lower middle class through better distribution of wealth and incentives to consume.

They have also provided universal access to schools, though the quality of education remains poor.

Social networks, on the other hand, are beginning to allow people to fight back with a more liberal agenda.

He says: "What lifted me out of poverty was education, quality education."

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