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Bolsonaro’s Approval Rating is Worse Than Any Past Brazilian President at the 100-Day Mark

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was elected last year on a wave of popular anger at the country’s stagnant economy and political chaos, promising voters a “better future.”

After just over 100 days in office, many Brazilians feel this right-wing former congressman has not delivered on that promise.

Bolsonaro’s approval rating, which began dropping immediately after he took office on Jan. 1, has declined from 49% in January to 34% in late March, according to the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics. That’s the lowest ever recorded for a Brazilian president at the 100-day mark.

Nepotism, hate speech and mismanagement

Bolsonaro’s rise to lead Latin America’s biggest country after 13 years of leftist leadership was made possible by years of overlapping political, economic and crime crises that created widespread disillusionment across Brazil.

Capitalizing on voter frustrations, Bolsonaro, a longtime lower house representative, ran a polarizing outsider campaign not unlike the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump, now a close ally. He demonized women and minorities, attacked democratic institutions and, according to a Brazilian court, incited hate and violence.

Still, he won the presidency last October with 55% of the vote, an average share of votes which does not compare to the more than 60% share of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s consecutive landslide victories in the 2002 and 2006 elections. In Brazil, voting is compulsory.

Many Brazilians expressed hope that, once in office, Bolsonaro would set the demagogy and bigotry aside to focus on addressing the huge challenges facing Brazil. These include a long-stagnant economy, rampant government corruption and record-setting urban violence.

That hasn’t happened.

Hours after taking office, Bolsonaro issued an executive order that decreased environmental protections of the Amazon, outraging environmentalists worldwide and endangering the indigenous Brazilians who live in the world’s biggest rainforest.

On a recent visit to the Holocaust Museum in Israel, Bolsonaro made headlines for claiming that Germany’s Nazi Party was a leftist regime. His foreign affairs minister only made things worse when he defended his boss’s comments by explaining that both Nazis and socialists are “anti-capitalist, anti-religion, collectivist [and] against individual freedom.”

Picking unnecessary fights

Bolsonaro has demonstrated a lack of mastery of the legislative process, despite having been a lawmaker for nearly three decades.

Reforming Brazil’s expensive, ailing pension system was one of Bolsonaro’s main electoral promises to boost the economy. But his mismanagement of negotiations around a bill to save Brazil $US270 billion over the next 10 years by raising the retirement age and increasing individual contributions has frustrated the fragile, cross-party coalition of lawmakers working to pass his plan.

Bolsonaro has picked fights with supporters of the bill, including the speaker of the lower house. And he has failed to explain critical aspects of the proposed reform.

Pension reform, which requires three-fifths congressional support to pass, now seems unlikely to happen before the June deadline Bolsonaro set – if it happens at all.

Bolsonaro’s controversial cabinet

Concerns over corruption have likewise clouded Bolsonaro’s first 100 days.

Bolsonaro has failed to take seriously repeated corruption allegations against numerous aides. That’s risky in Brazil, where a multi-year judicial investigation still underway has sent two presidents, several lawmakers and dozens of corporate executives to jail for bribery.

And Bolsonaro recently raised eyebrows by suggesting that he’d like to appoint his son Carlos, a far-right Rio de Janiero city councilman who manages the president’s Twitter feed, to join his cabinet. All three of the president’s sons play an unusually active role in their father’s government.

Bolsonaro’s frequent positive references to military dictatorship as a form of governance also has critics worried.

Protests erupted in early April after Bolsonaro called on Brazilians to honor the anniversary of the 1964 coup that ushered in military rule in Brazil. Brazil’s 24-year military dictatorship claimed 191 lives, “disappeared” 210 dissidents and tortured several thousand people, according to a 2014 government report.

“Liberty and democracy only exist when the armed forces want them to,” Bolsonaro has since commented.

Bolsonaro served in Brazil’s armed forces. His vice president, Hamilton Mourão, is a retired general. And eight out of the 22 ministers in Bolsonaro’s cabinet are military officers.

That’s a higher proportion of military men in government than any prior democratic administration in Brazil – higher even than some of its authoritarian regimes.

Some of Bolsonaro’s civilian cabinet ministers are equally controversial.

Damares Alves, the evangelical pastor picked to lead Brazil’s Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights, has made it her mission to promote “family values,” which entails promoting traditional values and combating abortion as well as gender equality.

“It’s a new era in Brazil: Boys wear blue and girls wear pink!” she announced on her first day in office.

Historically, the human rights ministry has worked to improve the lives of minorities in Brazil and ensure their legal protection.

And Bolsonaro’s first minister of education, Ricardo Vélez Rodríguez – who has since been fired for mismanagement – outraged teachers when he ordered all public schools to submit to the ministry a video of schoolchildren singing the national anthem on the first day of the new school year.

Brazil’s literacy rate is among the lowest in Latin America, at 92%. And its school dropout rate is among the region’s highest: 28% of students never graduate.

His demand may also have been illegal, since Brazilian law prohibits the recording of minors without parental consent.

Bolsonaro was elected to snap Brazil out of a deep slump. After three months in office, the “better future” he promised looks a lot like the crisis that came before.

Helder Ferreira do Vale, Associate Professor, Graduate School of International and Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Bolsonaro’s Approval Rating is Worse Than Any Past Brazilian President at the 100-Day Mark appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Bolsonaro’s Approval Rating is Worse Than Any Past Brazilian President at the 100-Day Mark

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Broadway’s Sensational ‘Hadestown’ Wrenches Myth into Modern Times: REVIEW

The world on stage at the Walter Kerr Theatre feels a lot like ours — scorched but soulful, a sort of dystopian now. As the first staccato notes of “Road to Hell” flit from an onstage trombone, it’s immediately clear that Hadestown, a haunting gut-punch of a new musical that opened on Broadway tonight, breathes the same air we do. This imaginative spin on Orpheus and Eurydice speaks with a bleeding heart to the here and now. It is both the most original and breathtaking musical of the season and a trenchant piece of political art.

The musical’s roots as a 2010 concept album from folk singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, developed for the stage with director Rachel Chavkin, are evident in its stripped-down and compact staging. A semi-circular colonnade encases the stage and seats an onstage band; a wrought-iron balcony lends a New Orleans flavor (scenic design is by Rachel Hauck). Consider it an American take on fallen Roman decadence.

Greed is to blame for the woes of Hadestown, where the seasons have been blighted by Hades unwillingness to share his wife Persephone, the goddess of harvest and fertility, with the world above ground (the pair are played with wry relish by Patrick Page and Amber Gray). This devil is also a rapacious capitalist, who lures a penniless, hungry Eurydice to the underworld with the promise of work and reward. Her love Orpheus, determined to compose a song that will restore natural order, follows behind to rescue her (Eva Noblezada and Reeve Carney play the honey-voiced lovers).

A parable about the havoc wreaked by avarice on the natural world and its inhabitants could hardly seem more pointed. Throw in a pin-stripped megalomaniac leading a call-and-response about building a wall and it’s hard to believe Mitchell actually composed the score back in 2010. “We build the wall to keep us free,” sings Hades’ somber workforce. “The wall keeps out the enemy.” “Who do we call the enemy/ My children, my children?” Hades asks. “The enemy is poverty,” comes the response. The echoed exchange seems to reverberate right through the floorboards into the earth, and not just because Page since with a bass more gravely than Leonard Cohen’s.

Chavkin, a Tony nominee for Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, maintains a tight focus on storytelling (the venerable André De Shields plays Cupid, our narrator). Chavkin’s few visual flourishes (one in particular with lighting designer Bradley King) are all the more impactful given the production’s overall restraint even as it has grown in proportion (the show originated off-Broadway in 2017 and played London last year).

For all its chilling resonance, Hadestown is also a hoot. Gray’s Persephone is among the most wild and out there leading ladies since Oklahoma!’s Ado Annie. And the story offers s glimmer or two of hope to hang our hat on. Orpheus raises a cup of wine to the audience, a toast “to the world we dream about, and the one we live in now.” It’s further proof we’re witnessing a new dawn for American musicals.

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Follow Naveen Kumar on Twitter: @Mr_NaveenKumar

photos by matthew murphy

The post Broadway’s Sensational ‘Hadestown’ Wrenches Myth into Modern Times: REVIEW appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Broadway’s Sensational ‘Hadestown’ Wrenches Myth into Modern Times: REVIEW

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