In soccer-mad Brazil, it has been astonishing to see more people out protesting on the streets than celebrating their team’s performance on the futbol pitch. This is surely not what the legendary former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had in mind a few years ago when he snagged both the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics for Brazil.

This has been a startling “bread not circuses” moment for one of the world’s largest democracies. The Confederations Cup, which ends this weekend in Rio de Janeiro, is the high-profile warm-up tournament to next year’s World Cup, but it has been largely overshadowed by the marvel of more than a million Brazilians protesting expensive public services, a deteriorating educational system and pervasive government corruption at all levels.

Until recently, Brazil had been regarded as a burgeoning economic miracle. President Lula, as he was known, served two terms, until 2011, and was largely credited with presiding over Brazil’s longest period of economic growth in three decades. His government pumped billions of dollars into social programs, which brought millions of Brazilians out of extreme poverty.

Lula was also revered throughout the developing world. In 2010, he visited the Gulf region, came to Qatar and asked for a tour of the Al Jazeera news network. I was working there as head of Al Jazeera English and I remember him telling us that the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics will be seen as “crowning achievements” of Brazil’s climb to global power.

Looking now at how many Brazilians today resent those commitments, it is ironic given how Lula’s public career began. In the 1970s, he was the left-wing, rabble-rousing leader of the country’s huge Mineworkers’ Union, while Brazil was in the depths of a military dictatorship.

When Lula was in Doha, I reminded him of an incident in 1979, which former CBC correspondent Brian Stewart and I remember well. We were preparing a profile of Lula and went to one of his large rallies in Sao Paulo. His microphone broke and he came to borrow one of ours. It must have been odd for the crowd to see this charismatic man, who eventually rose to lead Brazil, walking around the stage with a bright red “CBC News” logo on his microphone.

Lula’s policies as president improved the conditions of the extremely poor — and the extremely rich — but did little to help the middle class in an enduring way. And they heightened expectations throughout Brazil. The protests in recent weeks have affected dozens of cities and the grievances have ranged from growing rage over poor public services to government tolerance of corruption and the high cost of World Cup soccer facilities.

As with the public protests in Turkey, which started with resentment about a mall being built in a city park, the trigger in Brazil was similarly specific: the high cost of bus fares in one city. But then it expanded to reveal a widespread public belief that Brazil’s political process is dysfunctional, if not completely corrupt.

The current Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, who was once imprisoned and tortured by the country’s former military dictatorship, was clearly surprised by the breadth of the protests. With a presidential election scheduled for next year, she has proposed several measures to regain the public trust. But there is no evidence yet that the protesters are listening.

Some Canadians will find the worry among Brazilians about the costs of the Olympics and the World Cup a tad familiar. History will never forget the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics. The debt from those Games ballooned to $1.5 billion, particularly because of the astronomical price tag of the Olympic Stadium.

As a former Montrealer, I remember the moment when Jean Drapeau, the mayor at the time, boasted that the Games would be the first self-financed Olympics in history. As he put it: “The Montreal Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby.” Well, that baby lived to more than 30 years of age. It took until December 2006 for Montrealers to pay off the debt.

So, as an ex-Montrealer, my advice to Brazilians is: “March on!”

Tony Burman, former head of Al Jazeera English and CBC News, teaches journalism at Ryerson University. (tony.burman@gmail.com )

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