The speaker of Brazil’s lower house of congress on Friday strongly denied newly filed charges of corruption and said he won’t resign from office. Protesters carried out marches across Brazilian cities, demanding the president’s impeachment. German officials expect to work with the Brazilians to find common ground on climate policy before a UN conference in December, at which some 200 countries will try to agree on limiting the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius.
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“President Rousseff has just shown real leadership in setting 100% clean energy as the most effective way we can prevent the catastrophic consequences of global warming”.
He defected in July and became the face of opposition to Rousseff’s centre-left Workers’ Party, which has led the coalition with the PMDB since 2003.
The recent corruption scandal and the upcoming Olympic Games has done nothing more than fan the flames of almost universal outrage among all Brazil’s political factions, placing the PT party in jeopardy and getting even the once-loved former president, Lula Da Silva, into legal trouble. However, political parties in Brazil frequently exaggerate turnout. A partial police estimate, which did not include figures for Rio de Janeiro, put the numbers at 72,000.
Rousseff defended the right of the Brazilians to carry out a protest and pointed towards the need for cleaning up corruption taking place at Petrobras. Her approval rating was 8 percent, as her popularity plunged to the lowest of any president since Brazil returned to democracy 30 years ago.
An extensive investigation was carried out for a kickback scheme, worth millions of dollars, at the Petrobras oil company, run by the state.
Former Petrobras executive Paulo Roberto Costa alleged in September that executives at several companies were inflating the price of Petrobras contracts and skimming off the excess funds. There is now little confidence in her ability to govern effectively and get Brazil’s economy back into the black.
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Rousseff, whose government is reeling from the worst economic downturn in three decades and a massive corruption scandal, briefed Merkel on Brazil’s ambitious infrastructure plans and invited German companies to bid for concessions in building roads, ports, railroads and airports.
