Fabiana Frayssinet – InterPress Service, 09/05/2011
Dilma Rousseff greets beneficiaries of a government social programme. Credit:Roberto Stuckert Filho/PR - president's office of Brazil
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is starting to gain support for a war on corruption that she is quietly waging.
As far as “cleaning up” goes, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s successor – also a member of the leftwing Workers’ Party (PT) – says she is only interested in wiping abject poverty off the map of this country of 192 million people, which is Latin America’s economic powerhouse.
But in the eight months she has been in office dozens of top-level officials, including her chief of staff, the agriculture and transportation ministers and the undersecretary of tourism, from the PT as well as allied parties, have been removed from their posts on charges of corruption.
