Tirade against the Government
I bumped into our landlady on the way out of the apartment today and was cornered for at least 10 minutes with a complete tirade against everything to do with the government. (Landlady makes her sound old. In fact she must be half my age if not more).
She was sure that no other country had to put up with such heavy taxes, interest rates and long waiting lists for medical treatment like they do here in Brazil.
In fact we are taxed more heavily in England than they are here in Brazil - but the difference is that our taxes go to what they are supposed to be for, whereas, according to my landlady the taxes here go into the pockets of corrupt government officials or are used for political 'games' - so nothing improves.
She said that she thought it a disgrace that a city the size of Florianopolis doesn't have a proper sewage system (evidently it works on the basis of septic tanks or equivalent) and that it was an equal disgrace that the state could run out of vaccines so that for the past two months young children have not received the vaccinations they should have.
In her opinion the problem lies in the fact that people are not sufficiently educated or informed and are unwilling to be informed. This is a generalisation of course, but her illustration was that even though there are news broadcasts on the TV, people only watch 'novelas' (soaps) and aren't interested in the news. At one point, in her exasperation, she even suggested that democracy doesn't work in Brazil, although she didn't go so far as saying that she would like the military dictatorship back. She might be too young to remember how terrible the situation was here in the days of the dictatorship.
From our perspective, it does seem that corruption is endemic in the political culture of Brazil and that people seem to think that because government has always been corrupt it always will be and that's just the way things are. If this is true, the sheer size of Brazil makes you wonder whether there is a solution to this problem.
I bumped into our landlady on the way out of the apartment today and was cornered for at least 10 minutes with a complete tirade against everything to do with the government. (Landlady makes her sound old. In fact she must be half my age if not more).
She was sure that no other country had to put up with such heavy taxes, interest rates and long waiting lists for medical treatment like they do here in Brazil.
In fact we are taxed more heavily in England than they are here in Brazil - but the difference is that our taxes go to what they are supposed to be for, whereas, according to my landlady the taxes here go into the pockets of corrupt government officials or are used for political 'games' - so nothing improves.
She said that she thought it a disgrace that a city the size of Florianopolis doesn't have a proper sewage system (evidently it works on the basis of septic tanks or equivalent) and that it was an equal disgrace that the state could run out of vaccines so that for the past two months young children have not received the vaccinations they should have.
In her opinion the problem lies in the fact that people are not sufficiently educated or informed and are unwilling to be informed. This is a generalisation of course, but her illustration was that even though there are news broadcasts on the TV, people only watch 'novelas' (soaps) and aren't interested in the news. At one point, in her exasperation, she even suggested that democracy doesn't work in Brazil, although she didn't go so far as saying that she would like the military dictatorship back. She might be too young to remember how terrible the situation was here in the days of the dictatorship.
From our perspective, it does seem that corruption is endemic in the political culture of Brazil and that people seem to think that because government has always been corrupt it always will be and that's just the way things are. If this is true, the sheer size of Brazil makes you wonder whether there is a solution to this problem.
posted by Jenny Mackness at 1:40 PM
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