The sad end of the Workers' Party (PT) government in Brazil
Flavio Menezes
Professor and Director of the Australian Institute for Business and Economics at the University of Queensland
A historical day for Brazil. The constitutional process prevailed and Congress impeached a corrupt, incompetent government. Now it is up to the Senate.
Rather than being remembered for their contribution to the reduction of social inequality in Brazil, the Worker’s Party (PT) and former president Lula will be remembered as leading one of the most corrupt governments in the history of western democracies.
Now the long process of reconstruction starts. A key priority ought to be to build (or rebuild) institutions that are robust and corruption-free. This necessarily goes through revisiting the role of government – reinforcing the role of government as providing social insurance but reducing its role as a creator of monopoly rents. The latter is one of the reasons for the prevalence of corruption in Brazil.
Strategy | Business Improvement | Cross-functional Leadership | Public Policy
9yA historical day, indeed, professor Flávio! But the long road to institutional change seems a bit off the agenda, unfortunately. With its hard to pass and unpopular list of reforms, which goes through the need reducing the size of the government and increase its efficiency, and reforms of the political and the tax system, it tends to be feasible only in the long run, when, hopefully, will get a more educated population and better political leadership. In the meantime, if an eventual Temer administration is able to undo some of the macroeconomic mismanagement of its predecessors, we might be off for a good start.