Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's New Woman President/ NaBloPoMo

I don't have much of an opinion or deep thoughts to share with you about Brazil's new president, but I think that as a Brazilian, it would be a bit strange for me not to blog about it...

In a few words, lots of people in Brazil were campaigning against Dilma (we usually use first names for famous people in Brazil) using arguments that were not particularly strong: corruption in the former president's government because she belongs to his party, the fact that she was a former "terrorist" or "guerrilla fighter" opposing the military dictatorship in the 60s in Brazil, inaccurate statistical comparisons between next to last president's four years and Lula's eight years, and more. There were even conspiracy theories attesting that she had actually been born in Bulgaria (country her parents, or father? is/are from) and therefore was ineligible to be Brazil's president. All those campaigns notwithstanding, she won today.

Today was the second round of the presidential election because Dilma hadn't won 51 percent of the votes back on October 1st. There were many other candidates in the first round and the second runner up, José Serra was not particularly strong and thus unable to beat Dilma.

The truth is that in spite of the strong criticism, the former president Lula (whose popularity is about 80% right now) did great things for the country -- doubtless as his detractors point out -- because the previous president, the respected sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso, had set the country on the right track. In any case, I think it's not bad that there will be continuity between the previous government and Dilma's.

So, yeah, these are my thoughts. I know I should write more about Brazil, but I don't.

Well... maybe I should challenge myself to write at least, let's see... 7 (my favorite number) posts about Brazil during NaBloPoMo -- what about that? If you have any questions (not only about Brazil, anything), please send them my way!! Because I'm pledging to write at least 30 posts in the next 30 days, as I've been doing for the past few years...

P.S. I am a bit excited that Brazil has a woman president, but I think I would have liked the other candidate, Marina Silva better. Do I think it was this huge breakthrough or something? Not really, and I would be hard-pressed to explain why. Brazil is, after all a very "machista" country, that's for sure! Well, I can try to write more about that later. Maybe it's because I'm "out of it" -- 14 years living here.