World Cup Drama - Manaus

A number of stadiums, that have cost billions, are behind schedule. With each day that passes it looks more and more like São Paulo's "Itaquerão" will not be finished in time to host the opening game of the World Cup. It will likely be moved to Rio's Maracaná.

If the Public Ministry's interdiction of the Manaus stadium is prolonged it too could be out of the running for any games scheduled for that city. Billions more down the drain.

75% of all of the transportation projects throughout the country are either behind schedule or have been cancelled completely. Those that a proceeding on schedule are running over-budget.

The fun is just beginning.... wait a few more months.

And now the citizens of Brazil are losing their lives over the governments failed promises and obligations. Absolutely pathetic.

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I do not want to see the people of Brazil suffer and I never said I did. Clearly they already are though - people are losing their lives over it. What I do want to see is the citizens of this country, a country that has so much potential but equal laziness as well, to get off the butts and tell the government enough is enough. And if they have to protest - then protest. But here is the catch - protest with a purpose. Don't protest for the sake of destroying public property or acting like fools. Because at that point the world will lose sympathy for not only the government, but also its citizens - and actually the international media is not holding much hope for the event(s).

Prior to June I never heard Brazil mentioned once in the news - after the peaceful protests turned purposeless Brazil has earned its place in the international spotlight.

Every government has corruption and scandals. We all know this. It is about what the people do to correct the problem. Sitting idly back and just hoping for change brings nothing other than, you guessed it - no change.

I love this country. If I didn't I would have left by now. That is not to say I am not leaving, because I am. But I am in no particular rush.

The problems that your country has are a result of inaction by the people and acceptance of it as the norm.

I hope the people (mainly the citizens) make the event(s) successful as possible. I never said I wanted the WC to fail. What purpose would that serve?

I think that the world is already painfully aware that Brazil has problems, they just don't understand the magnitude of those problems. This fact is evidenced by São Paulo's failed attempt to win its bid for Expo 2020. Expo is the third largest world event, only surpassed by the Olympics and World Cup. Brazil was eliminated in the first round of voting, largely because of the high profile problems it is having with the World Cup and because of its poor past performance with events like the Panamerican Games of 2007, Confederations Cup earlier this year and the pope's visit for World Youth Day.

Other hosting nations for events such as the World Cup and Olympic Games have had their share of problems; that said most truly democratic nations haven't deprived their citizens of schools, hospitals, public security and other basic human services in order to stage those events. Brazil has effectively abandoned its population and left them to their own devices much more than any other host nation I'm aware of. This has sparked public demonstrations the like of which Brazil has not seen in decades.

I'm not convinced that the collapse of the World Cup and the loss of the Olympic Games which would surely result from that would be such a big hit to the Brazilian economy. I hardly think that would cause investors that are already in this country to run for the exit. Brazil is also too large of a potential market for foreign investors to ignore so I don't think that investment would dry up either. We see that the present "tunnel vision" displayed by this government which has focused all of its efforts on these two events, to the exclusion of all else, has brought about a slump in the economy which was until a little over a year ago still growing, albeit slowly.

To the contrary, I personally think that the World Cup will be a fiasco and could possibly bring about cancellation of the Olympic Games being held here. I also believe that would serve for a much needed wake-up call for the government of this great country. I think it would force them to focus on internal problems that desparately need to be fixed rather than some pie-in-the-sky dreams about launching itself into the "first world" with major international events. Clearly it is neither ready for those events nor for the first world; at least not just yet.

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