Trying to understand the problem.

Yes, this is exactly why the Brazilian electoral system is so screwed up and corruption is rampant.

When you allow corporate donations to be made directly to individual politicians that throws the doors wide open to corporate agendas, and illegal enrichment of candidates through making promises in return for financing.

The absolute lack of real investigation of such funding, other than self-reporting, plus electronic voting machines that a 5 year old can rig, don't make things any more honest.

With only 2 million votes separating Dilma and Neves in the 2014 elections, if they had manual voting and/or stricter voter identification, and eliminated direct corporate donations, I'm sure that the result would have been very different.

Cheers,
James
expat.com Experts Team

A good read, according to the cited article Brasil's electoral law was inspired by the North-American model........

Sounds exactly like what has been happening in the U.S. for some 35-40 years. In that time, the U.S. has been sinking into oligarchy/plutocracy, a system in which the filthy rich are never satisfied with their wealth and push to gain more and more. In a democracy that is accomplished by buying off politicians and appealing to low-information voters' bigotry and prejudices.

The middle class is being destroyed in the U.S. -Examples: I am 72 years of age (1) tuition for my first year of college at a Jesuit university  in Pennsylvania was $500 which I paid for by caddying and other summer jobs. The current tuition there is $30,000 annual; (2) I left college with no debt. Kids are graduating today with as much as $100,000 or more. I had no debt; (3) jobs were plentiful and easy to find. Today, kids leave with debt and have a hard time finding employment; (4) I had/have a pension. I was an insurance underwriter. Insurance companies and the like do not offer pensions nowadays. They have 401K plan which is nice as a supplement to a pension, but don't come close to doing what a pension does; (5) With a wife and two kids back in the 1960's, I didn't have to pay a red cent for my health insurance. It was part of the benefits package. Today, some one like me would be paying about $6,000 or more out of pocket; (6) Medical costs - are you kidding? They're astronomical today. In 1961, my brother-in-law, a medical doctor charges $6 for an office visit. Today they're charging at least $300.

The French Revolution was about standing up to the excesses of the royalty and their oligarch/plutocrat friends. The 17,000,000 or so of the common citizen decided they had had enough and took things into their own hands.

Also we need to do in a democracy to effect meaningful change is to pay attention to the issues and vote based on what helps ME financially and stop voting based on guns, the skin color of the president, hate for other religions, etc.

A people, a nation gets the government it deserves...............