Editorial: Roussef Has Her Last Chance to Save Her Administration

09/14/2015 - 06h09

Amidst a very serious political and economical crisis, that she helped to create and to which she has responded in an erratic and uncoordinated way; witnessing the deep corrosion of her popular and parliamentary support, coupled with the ethical dismantling of her party, the PT, and the other parties that support her, the Dilma Rousseff administration is hanging by a thread.

The president has overstretched her right to make mistakes. In less than ten months of her second term, she has lost credibility and exhausted the patience that the Brazilian society still had for her.

She now needs to demonstrate that she still has the political ability to offer new paths for the country in the time that her government has left.

She must recognize the alarming situation of the ongoing crisis and unhesitatingly respond to the emergencies produced especially by the generalized irresponsibility that has become notorious in recent years.

Extreme measures must be taken. The president must take them to congress as soon as possible - and the congress must abandon provocation and blackmail for the sake of economic and social stability.

The end of this trial also depends on congressmen and senators; they cannot shun their responsibilities, let alone imagine that they will be spared if the country eventually succumbs.

It is absolutely necessary to constrain the increase in the public debt and the economic deterioration. Unprecedented expense cuts must be taken radically – otherwise even worse nightmares could occur, such as the specter of uncontrolled inflation.

The contention of expenses must concentrate on wasteful social security benefits, whose rules are out of step with the situation and with the national population growth. The government must also target subsidies to specific sectors of the economy and expenses with part of its social programs.

The dramatic circumstances also call for a partial and temporary release of the compulsory expenses with public health and education, which would be followed by a careful review of these expenses in the future.

Aside from adopting easily legible initiatives, such as the symbolic reduction in the ministries and commissioned posts, the government must produce legal mechanisms that will result in an effective control of expenses - including the salaries of public employees - conditioning its expansion to G.D.P growth.

Although they are drastic, these measures will not be enough to repair the budget hole that was dug by the president's ineptitude.

Once they are put into practice, however, they will give the government credit to demand yet another sacrifice - a rise in the already obscene tax rate, a burden to be shared in the fairest way possible among the several strata of the population.

Unfortunately, there is no way of escaping an increase in taxes, resorting to new quotas on the income of the richest and the expansion of emergency taxes on fuel, for example.

Of course Brazilian society will show immense resistance to initiatives of this type. However, the country has no choice.

President Dilma Rousseff has no choice either: if she bends under the weight of the crisis, all she will have left is to abandon her presidential responsibilities and, eventually, leave office.

Translated by THOMAS MUELLO

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