Brazil’s congress starts to reform itself
To clean up the sleazy political system will require a lot more work
BRAZILIAN election campaigns are costly affairs, featuring big rallies, glitzy television commercials and lavish leafleting. Presidential candidates criss-cross a country whose territory is bigger than that of the 28 members of the European Union combined. In 2014 candidates for the presidency, governorships, congress and state assemblies spent 5bn reais ($2bn). Undeclared donations, mostly from companies, may have been twice that.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Elections on a shoestring”
From the October 14th 2017 edition
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