Dilma Rousseff Says FIFA's Executive Committee Is a Pressure

05/16/2014 - 10h18

At a press dinner with ten sports journalists at the Alvorada Palace in the capital of Brazil, Brasília, president Dilma Roussef said that Fifa's executive committee represent a constant pressure.

When the president spoke of the need to expand the subway network in large Brazilian cities, she was questioned whether such works were being considered for the World Cup. Ms Rousseff answered: "Get Blatter and Valcke off my back! These works have nothing to do with the World Cup, these are works aimed for the cities".

One of the attendees then asked: "Do they pressure you, Ms. president?". "Quite a bit", Ms Rousseff agreed, in reference to Joseph Blatter, Fifa's President and Jerôme Valcke, the Secretary General.

The president listened more than she spoke when the subject was football but she made sure to say that she was not much worried about election polls at the moment: "From August onward I will have much to show. There will be a lot of work to show", she emphasised.

When questioned about whether talking about fear of the past doesn't make dangerous propaganda, Ms Rousseff pointed out: "It is advertisement of PT (The Worker's Party), and they have the right to advertise themselves. My role is bigger than that, it is not about advertising the government".

A television commercial released by PT went on air earlier this week. It links the party's rivals in the next presidential elections to "ghosts from the past" and concluds that Brazil "doesn't want to recede".

Ms Rousseff does not seem awkward about meeting the president of the Brazilian Football Association (CBF) José Maria Marin, who in 1976 complimented the police commissioner Sérgio Paranhos Fleury (1933-1979) who had been accused of torturing Ms Rousseff's ex-husband, Carlos Araújo:

"Why mention Carlos? This tortures me. Do you know what I feel? I feel like it is not me who has to explain barbarities to my daughter or grandson. The perpetrators that do. Because we won. This is how I feel: I feel that we won".

THE PRESS

Do criticisms from the press bother you? "They warn me more than they bother me. You have no idea how much criticisms help sometimes. I wear an armour", the president said, without naming names.

Ms Rousseff told that the BRICS meeting scheduled to have taken place in Brazil last March has been postponed to July because the Chinese leader Xi Jinping requested it, because he is a big football fan.

The president joked in an answer to a question about the loneliness of power: "I might be lonely if I had the time".

She also said the road to re-election is more complicated than winning for the first time for three reasons: "First because you are already president; second because you would like to be re-elected and third because you are who you are. That is, everything is a reason for criticism".

In the answer to a question about the possibility of the population turning its back on the World Cup, she spoke with conviction: "When the time comes, this country will burst with excitement".

Translated by CRISTIANE COSTA LIMA

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	Roberto Stuckert Filho/Divulgação/PR
	At a press dinner with sports journalists Dilma said that Fifa's executive committee represent a constant pressure