The presidency of Dilma Rousseff began on 1 January 2011 with Dilma Vana Rousseff's inauguration as president after defeating PSDB candidate José Serra in the 2010 elections, and ended with her impeachment on 31 August 2016, already in her second term.
The period was historic because it was the first time a woman had held the Presidency of the Republic in Brazil. Initially, the government had 37 ministries in the first term and 39 in the second term, the largest number of ministries since redemocratization in 1985.
In her first months in office, Dilma contradicted the desire of sectors of her own party to regulate the press and declared that "a free media is essential for democracy". Dilma's second term was marked by a serious economic and political crisis in the country, with GDP per capita shrinking by more than 9% between 2014 and 2016. In the year of her impeachment, the unemployment rate stood at 12%, while in 2010 it was 6.7%. Even after her departure, the unemployment rate remained in the double digits for more than five years, falling only in March 2022, during Jair Bolsonaro's presidency.
The Democracy Index, drawn up annually by the British magazine The Economist, ranked Brazil as the 47th most democratic country in the world in 2010, the beginning of the presidency of Dilma; in the 2013 ranking, it appeared in 44th place. According to the survey, 11% of the world's population lived in "complete democracies", which was not the case in Brazil, still considered an "imperfect democracy".
Inauguration
First term Dilma and her vice-president, Michel Temer, were sworn in by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) at a ceremony held on 17 December 2010, at 5 pm, at the TSE headquarters in Brasília, attended by 250 guests, including relatives and politicians. Dilma said she would "honour women, take care of the weakest and govern for all". The diplomas were made at the Brazilian Mint and read:By the will of the Brazilian people, expressed at the polls on 31 October 2010, the candidate for the coalition Para o Brasil Seguir Mudando, Dilma Vana Rousseff, was elected president of the Federative Republic of Brazil. In testimony of this fact, the Election Justice issued this diploma, which entitles her to take office before the National Congress on 1 January 2011, under the terms of the Constitution.
Inauguration ceremony and subsequent events
Dilma took office as president of Brazil on 1 January 2011. The inauguration event – which was organized by her transition team, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence and the Presidency of the Republic – was expected with anticipation, as she was the first woman to preside over the country. Important female figures in Brazil's history were honoured with panels all over the Monumental Axis in Brasília. According to the Federal District Military Police, around 30,000 people attended the event.
By 21 December 2010, the Senate's publishing house had printed 1,229 invitations for Dilma's inauguration, but the National Congress received a total of 2,000 guests for the ceremony. According to press reports, between 14 and 17 heads of state and government confirmed their attendance. Among them were José Sócrates, Juan Manuel Santos, Mauricio Funes, Alan García, José Mujica, Hugo Chávez, Álvaro Colom, Alpha Condé, Sebastián Piñera, Evo Morales (but he was unable to attend due to last-minute protests in Bolívia) and Boyko Borisov. US President Barack Obama sent Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to represent him. The former Prime Minister of Japan, Tarō Asō, also attended the ceremony.
In addition to the formal ceremony, Dilma's inauguration also featured performances by five Brazilian singers: Elba Ramalho, Fernanda Takai, Zélia Duncan, Mart'nália and Gaby Amarantos. The Ministry of Culture organized the cultural part of the event with an estimated budget of 1.5 million reais. The concerts began at 10:00, ended at 14:00 with the start of the official ceremony, and continued after 18:00. Dilma did not attend, as she held a reception at the Itamaraty Palace for the foreign authorities attending the swearing-in ceremony, with each one able to speak to her for 30 seconds.
"Presidenta" Brazil was the first Portuguese-speaking country to have a woman elected to the position of head of state (although Carmen Pereira served as interim president of Guinea-Bissau between 14–16 May 1984). The cultured norm of the Portuguese language accepts both spellings – presidente and presidenta – as correct and acceptable. As early as 1889, Cândido de Figueiredo's Novo Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa used the term "presidenta" to mean a woman who presides, and other dictionaries also followed suit; for example, according to the Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa, "presidenta" is the feminine form of president, although it is less common. The Dicionário Aurélio, on the other hand, states that the word can be used in the masculine and feminine, referring to "presidenta" as "wife of the president" or "woman who presides". The Dicionário Michaelis and the Dicionário Brasileiro Globo also give the same meaning as the Aurélio.
In 2011, Dilma said she preferred to be addressed by the feminine inflected form “presidenta”. In 2016, she criticized the decision by EBC (Empresa Brasil de Comunicação), which controls state-owned media outlets, to discontinue using the term “presidenta” to distinguish the gender of the office of the President of the Republic in reports. The media have not established any standardization, but despite Dilma's declaration, a considerable number of newspapers, magazines and blogs have preferred to use the word presidente, which is applicable to both genders.
Second term
Dilma's re-election was announced at 8:27 p.m. on 26 October 2014, when 98% of the polls had already been counted. On the same day, in her first speech after being re-elected, she declared in Brasília that she would be open to dialog, that her re-election was a "vote of hope given by the people" and that "the first and most important" reform she intends to carry out will be political. According to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Dilma was sad to be re-elected.
Investiture ceremony
Dilma was sworn as president for a second term on 1 January 2015, in a solemn session in the Chamber of Deputies, attended by the President of the Senate, Renan Calheiros, the President of the Chamber, Henrique Eduardo Alves, and the President of the Supreme Federal Court, Ricardo Lewandowski. At the event, she announced the motto of her new government: "Brasil, Pátria Educadora".
Cabinet
First term
Second term
Domestic politics
Economic management
Dilma's management of the Brazilian economy began as a continuation of the policy adopted by the Lula government. Dilma was expected to be influenced by her predecessor, but she soon revealed her own idealism and leadership style, although Lula remained an influencer until the end of her government. Her government began with the departure of Henrique Meirelles from the presidency of the Central Bank, after eight years at the head of the institution, and the return of Alexandre Tombini, who, in his inauguration speech, defended a solid and efficient financial system as a condition for sustainable growth. Dilma opted for Guido Mantega as finance minister.
A study of the government's first year in office, conducted by the Centre for Research and Support for Workers in partnership with the Humanitas Institute of Unisinos, found that the principles that guided its initial actions derived from a developmentalist or interventionist model, in which the state plays an important role in regulating and fostering economic growth, as well as defining strategies for growth.
Despite the initial crisis she faced with her ministers, the government was not deeply damaged. Some major economic difficulties arose from the change in the international context, reducing the favourable environment for national growth that Lula had found in his first government, and bringing unexpected challenges to the original plans, lowering expectations.
Macroeconomics
Measures were implemented at the beginning of Dilma's government that included policies of strong public intervention in the economy, combining monetary policy with a reduction in interest rates and fiscal policy with control in investment, increased spending, subsidies and intervention in prices. This policy became known as the new economic matrix and was identified as one of the causes of the 2014 crisis.
Between 2010 and 2014, Brazil was the country that dropped the most positions in the world competitiveness ranking, falling from 38th place to 54th among the 60 economies analysed by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) and the Fundação Dom Cabral. The study evaluated the conditions offered by countries so that the companies that operate in them can be successful nationally and internationally, promoting growth and improvements in the living conditions of their population. The criteria assessed in the analysis are: economic performance, infrastructure and the efficiency of their governments and companies.
During Dilma's first term in office, Brazil achieved the best competitiveness index in an annual list published by the World Economic Forum, which analyses 118 variables grouped into 12 different categories. In the meantime, in 2012, Brazil's trade balance recorded a surplus of US$19.43 billion. Compared to 2011, when the positive balance totaled US$29.79 billion, there was a drop of 34.75%, the worst performance in 10 years.
In the following years, the results were even weaker. In 2013, the Brazilian trade balance had a surplus of US$2.56 billion, the worst result for a year since 2000, when there was a deficit of US$731 million. In 2014, there was a deficit of US$3.93 billion, the first since 2000.
Also in 2013, according to the Central Bank, the current account of Brazil, one of the main indicators of the state of the Brazilian economy (a figure which includes the results of the trade balance and other unrelated operations involving the inflow or outflow of capital – services and income), closed 2013 with an unprecedented deficit of US$81.37 billion. As a result, the deficit surpassed the negative result recorded in 2012 (-US$54.23 billion, an all-time record for a closed year), with an increase of 50%. In 2014, the deficit was even higher: US$90.9 billion (later revised to US$103.98 billion).
Budget
In February 2011, the government announced a record R$50 billion cut in the federal budget for the same year, equivalent to 1.2% of the gross domestic product (GDP). The justification for the cut was that the spending block was a way for the government to try to combat inflationary pressures, and consequently allow a "softer" policy for the basic interest rate. Minister of Finance Guido Mantega also explained that the measure was also part of the process of reversing all the stimuli made to the Brazilian economy between 2009 and 2010 to avoid the negative effects of the 2008 financial crisis. During the election campaign in which she emerged victorious, both Dilma and her opponent José Serra denied that they would make adjustments of this kind to the public accounts.
In the record budget cut, the Minha Casa, Minha Vida Programme received a reduction of more than R$5 billion in government transfers, despite the government's claim that spending on social programmes and PAC (Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento) investments would be fully maintained. According to Miriam Belchior, Dilma's chosen Minister for Planning, Budget and Management, the reduction in spending was related to the fact that the second part of Minha Casa Minha Vida has not yet been approved by Congress. The programme aimed to provide two million homes by 2014, 60% of them for low-income families.