GEORGETOWN, Guyana - The government of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has been mindful not to go down the same road as others – that of Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan being the most recent – that have opted for bullish, often brutal responses to popular protest.
If she may have been less than tardy in addressing the protests that had begun several days earlier in São Paulo over bus fare hikes then spread to other cities, her eventual response to the most serious anti-government protest of her two-and-a-half year presidential tenure was reflective of both a healthy measure of circumspection and a pointed acknowledgement of the legitimacy of public protest in a democratic society.
When she addressed the Brazilian people in a televised broadcast on Friday evening President Rousseff knew only too well that she was facing a public upheaval that had, in the previous days, gained significant traction on account of the role which the social media had played in taking it beyond São Paulo.