Brazil Elects First Female President
The first female president in the country’s history has been elected in Brazil. 62 year-old Dilma Rousseff of the ruling Working Party follows the popular Lula da Silva as the new president. She won against the former governor of Sao Paolo Jose Serra in a run-off election. The vote for Rousseff is a signal that the people want the work of the former president continued.
Ms Rouseff is an economist who was one of Lula da Silva’s important political advisors. The former president picked her to be his successor because he is not allowed to become president again after serving two terms.
Rouseff is a former guerrilla fighter who joined in the battle against military dictatorship in the 1960s. In the 1970s she was arrested, tortured and spent three years in prison
Ms Rouseff has promised to lead Brazil into a new age of prosperity and wealth. She wants to do away with poverty and achieve equal rights for women. Brazil’s new female president also wants to build millions of homes for the poor and has announced that she will pour more money into education.
Her biggest tasks will be preparing the country for two big sports events . Brazil is going to host the 2014 football World Cup as well as the Olympic Summer Games, two years later in Rio de Janeiro.
Related Topics
- Two Big Sporting Events Shape Brazil's Future
- Rio de Janeiro
- Police Try To Bring Back Peace to Rio's Slums
Words
- achieve = get, reach
- advisor = guide
- arrest = to take someone to a police station because they have done something against the law
- battle = fight
- economist = someone who studies the way in which money and goods are produced in a country
- elect = to choose someone for an official position by voting for them
- equal = the same
- former = past, earlier
- guerrilla fighter = a member of a rebel group that fights against the government
- host = to be the organizer of an event
- military dictatorship = a government in which only officers of the army rule the country, mostly without a parliament
- popular = liked by many people
- pour = invest
- poverty = the situation of being poor and not having enough money to live on
- prosperity = when people have everything they need for a good life
- ruling = governing
- run-off election = an election that takes place between the two candidates with the most votes if there was no clear winner in the first election
- serve = to have an official position
- successor = to be the person to follow someone
- task = job
- term = period of time in which you are president
- torture = to hurt someone in order to get information out of them
- wealth = richness