FOR a long time Dilma Rousseff looked invincible. Even huge nationwide protests last June, when millions of Brazilians took to the streets to air assorted grievances and disaffection with politicians, were not enough to depress the president’s approval ratings below 45%. Her popularity quickly rebounded; Ms Rousseff seemed poised for a first-round win in a presidential election this October. A new poll, however, confirms what many observers have been saying for months: that Ms Rousseff’s lead is more fragile than she and her Workers’ Party (PT) would care to admit.
The latest figures, published on April 29th by CNT/MDA, a pollster, found that 48% of Brazilians approve of the president, down from 55% in February and in line with other recent polling data. Should this dip below 40%, reckons João Castro Neves of Eurasia Group, a consultancy, her re-election would be in serious doubt.
Defeat is certainly no longer inconceivable. Inflation remains stubbornly high, hitting the poor who struggle to make ends meet and the indebted middle class as interest rates rise. Scandals at Petrobras, a state-controlled oil giant facing an...Continue reading
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IMAGINE a football championship in which the two top teams always draw, regardless of which plays the better, and in which the smaller teams stand little chance of ever winning a game. If the Chilean electoral system were a football championship, that’s what it would be like.
The country has a unique “binominal” voting system that ensures that the ruling centre-left coalition (the New Majority) and the centre-right bloc (the Alliance) take almost all the seats in parliament, shared pretty much equally between them. Two parliamentary seats are contested in each constituency. The winning candidate takes one and in most cases the candidate who finishes second takes the other. To win both seats, you have to win by a mile. That makes it difficult for either bloc to win a big majority in parliament, or for small parties and independent candidates to break their duopoly.
The country’s new president, Michelle Bachelet, wants to change the system. Describing it as “a thorn in the heart of our democracy”, she sent a bill to parliament on April 23rd outlining her plans to do just that. She wants to redraw Chile’s constituency...Continue reading
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AFTER seven years of manipulating inflation numbers, INDEC, Argentina’s statistics agency, rolled out a new, more believable consumer price index (CPI) in February. Economists warily applauded the agency’s first step towards normalisation. But “ojo!” (“look out!”), they warned: INDEC still had much to prove.
The agency is failing one important litmus test: owning up to Argentina’s real poverty rates. Until January INDEC announced the value of the basic-goods baskets it uses to calculate poverty and indigence every month. Since the introduction of its new CPI series, however, INDEC has not made a single statement on this topic. In February the agency’s schedule said it would make its first announcement on poverty rates on April 23rd. But that day came and went and the only noticeable action by INDEC was to purge any mention of poverty data from the agency’s calendar of upcoming statistical releases.
Jorge Capitanich, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s cabinet chief, chalked the omission up to “problems with methodology” and bridging the gap between old measurement techniques and new ones. If...Continue reading
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World Cup runneth under? IN GENERAL, President Enrique Peña Nieto has been treated well by Mexico’s mainstream media. His telenovela-star looks—there is seldom a hair out of place—make him easy to photograph. His ambitious reforms have provided splashy news stories. His most vocal opponents, such as protesting teachers, have proved so bothersome to ordinary people that they get no sympathy. Even drug-related violence, which has battered Mexico’s reputation in recent years, has been quietly relegated down the news agenda.Not so on the internet. Since Mr Peña started his campaign to bring the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) back to power in 2012, he has been relentlessly lampooned in social media. After he was pictured on the cover of Time magazine in February under the headline “Saving Mexico”, doctored versions circulated online of him “Selling” Mexico (or worse). The barbs are often jointly aimed at Televisa, the dominant TV broadcaster, which was the PRI’s loyal echo-chamber throughout its decades-long rule in the 20th century.That is why, when the government last month put forward legislation fleshing out a constitutional reform on telecoms and broadcasting, many netizens detected a crude attempt at censorship. Three proposals worry them: a new power for the government to restrict internet access at scenes of public disorder; permission for...
RETROFITTING houses to use less energy should be a no-brainer for homeowners. Over time, money spent on ways to reduce heat loss from draughty houses should produce a handsome return in lower fuel bills. In practice, many are cautious. Some improvements, such as solid-wall insulation and solar panels, can take over 25 years to cover their initial cost. Few owners are willing to wait that long: by then many are likely to have sold up and moved on.Several governments have started finance schemes designed to address this problem. Since 2008 PACE programmes have offered American homeowners loans to finance improvements, repaid through higher local taxes on the property, whoever it belongs to. In Britain, the Green Deal offers loans over a 25-year period, with repayments added to energy bills. Countries including France and Canada have similar initiatives.In theory, these schemes should boost investment in common energy-saving measures, such as extra insulation and new boilers, as the first owner does not have to pay all the costs upfront. But enrolment rates have disappointed, according to Sean Kidney at the Climate Bonds Initiative, a think-tank. In Britain, just 1% of those assessed for the Green Deal have signed up. In Berkeley, California, home of the first PACE scheme, the take-up rate is similarly paltry.Homeowners are unimpressed chiefly because the interest rates on the...
A nation of bean-counters 
A high-wire business 
Tell me what to do, pleads Gul 
FROM modest beginnings as the local mafia of Calabria, at the toe of the Italian boot, the ’Ndrangheta has spread far and wide. It has penetrated Italy’s financial and industrial heartlands, Lombardy and Piedmont, more than any other organised-crime group. It has a dominant position in the transatlantic cocaine trade, building on alliances with Colombian and then Mexican mobsters. One study put its turnover in 2013 at over €50 billion ($69 billion).But who controls the ’Ndrangheta? The question is central to one of Italy’s longest-running mafia trials, which is expected to end shortly after almost three years. The trial arose from an investigation code-named “Operation Goal” that led in 2010 to more than 40 arrests. Among the accused are members of the most notorious families in Reggio di Calabria. One, Pasquale Condello, is known as Il supremo.The prosecutor, Giuseppe Lombardo, argues that neither Mr Condello nor any other known or alleged mobster is truly supreme; they take their cues from an “invisible” ’Ndrangheta from the outwardly respectable middle class. In February Mr Lombardo altered the charges to reflect this, inviting the judges to express their view of his case in their written judgment.The earliest hint of a hidden ’Ndrangheta emerged in 2007, during an investigation overseen by Mr Lombardo into how the group tried to profit from the...
