Dilma Vana Rousseff is the 36th and current President of Brazil. She is the first woman to hold the office. Prior to that, in 2005, she was also the first woman to become Chief of Staff to the President of Brazil, appointed by then President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In October 2010, Rousseff was included in the Forbes' list of the most powerful people in the world, at the 16th position.
Education
In 1964 Rousseff left the conservative Colégio Sion and joined the Central State High School, a mixed sex public school where the students would usually make a great stir against the dictatorship established after the military coup. According to Rousseff, it was in this school that she became aware of the political situation of her country, getting "very subversive" and realizing that "the world was not a place for débutantes."
Rousseff entered the Minas Gerais Federal University School of Economics in 1964. But because of her guerrilla activity Rousseff was expelled from the Minas Gerais Federal University and barred from resuming her studies at that university in 1973. She decided to attend a preparatory course in order to take the vestibular test for Economics at the Rio Grande do Sul Federal University. She was admitted in the university and graduated in 1977.
Career
She became a socialist during her youth, and following the 1964 coup d'état joined various left-wing and Marxist urban guerrilla groups that fought against the military dictatorship. Rousseff was captured and jailed between 1970 and 1972 and reportedly tortured.
In 1968 she married journalist Cláudio Galeno de Magalhães Linhares, who introduced 20-year-old Rousseff to the underground resistance movement against the dictatorship. In the early 1970s, Rousseff separated from Galeno and started dating Carlos Franklin Paixão de Araújo. Both helped found the Democratic Labour Party (PDT) in Rio Grande do Sul participating in several of the party's electoral campaigns.
She became the Secretary of the Treasury of the city of Porto Alegre in the Alceu Collares administration, and later the Secretary of Energy of the State of Rio Grande do Sul under both Collares and Olívio Dutra administrations. In 2000, after an internal dispute in the Dutra cabinet, she left PDT and joined the Workers' Party.
In 2002, Rousseff joined the committee responsible for the energy policy of presidential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who after winning the election invited her to become Minister of Energy.
In 2005, a political crisis triggered by a corruption scandal led to the resignation of Chief of Staff José Dirceu. Rousseff took over the post, remaining in office until March 31, 2010, when she left in order to run for President. She was elected in a run-off on 31 October 2010. She is the first female elected President of Brazil, in addition to being the first economist to hold the office.
Politics
Rousseff states that her political thinking has evolved drastically – from Marxism to pragmatic capitalism — she remains proud of her radical roots.
Rousseff is pro-life, supporting abortion only for pregnancies which endangers the life of the mother or are the result of rape, cases in which the current Brazilian legislation allows women to terminate their pregnancies. Her present pro-life views have been criticized by sectors of the Roman Catholic Church in Brazil and other religious groups, due to her past support for the legalization of abortion.
Rousseff opposes gay marriage, but supports same-sex civil union. She said that "marriage is a religious issue. I, as an individual, would never say what a religion should do or not. We have to respect them." About same-sex civil union, Rousseff said that "basic civil rights should be recognized in a civil manner."
She also opposes the legalization of illegal drugs, stating that "Brazil today is unable to propose the decriminalization of any drug."
As a member of the Workers' Party, a social-democratic party which opposes Third Way politics, Rousseff was expected to be against privatization and neoliberalism. Rousseff, however, has an ambiguous position on issues that involve privatization. She is, for instance, "favorable to grant to private enterprise the construction of new power plants and roads, when it is cheaper to do them through grants than through public works." Additionally, she favored the privatization of airports in order to prepare Brazil's infra-structure for the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
She also pledged to deepen the social welfare network inaugurated by the Lula administration, saying that, under her rule, "Brazil will continue to grow, with social inclusion and mobility."