Turning the Page in Brazil: An Interview with Priscila Chammas

“The vast majority of political parties in Brazil have no ideology whatsoever. They are crony parties who trade political and economic favors, and they do so with those who offer more, regardless of principles or values.”

Before President Dilma Rousseff’s administration came under fire in 2014, Priscila Chammas had never even considered a career in Brazilian politics. After President Rousseff’s removal in January of 2016 and subsequent revelations of corruption, Ms. Chammas, driven by a desire for government truth, ran and was elected to city council in Salvador, Brazil. Now a member of the NOVO (New) party of Brazil, she is a candidate for a spot in its Chamber of Deputies from the state of Bahia. On August 5th, Ms. Chammas joined Merion West’s Erich Prince to discuss her journey to politics, polarization and other issues in Brazil, and how her platform hopes to solve these problems.

You began your career in journalism. Did some of your experiences in journalism spark your interest in politics?

I covered local politics for a while as a reporter, but the truth is that journalism had nothing to do with my decision to pursue a political career. It was more about a wrath as I saw everything going wrong in Brazil. We were distancing ourselves from development. I started thinking about it after the crisis in Dilma Rousseff’s administration, between 2014 and 2015. Before that, I had never been involved with politics.

As a candidate for federal deputy, what do you see as some of the biggest issues facing Brazilian citizens today that people in the United States might not be aware of?

Heavy taxation over both wealth generators and the poor, bureaucracy, a very large state that wants to take care of everything but only makes things harder for people. Brazil is the number 153 country at the Heritage Foundation economic freedom index and number 125 country in Doing Business. It’s impossible for any country to economically flourish holding those numbers. Corruption itself is a result of too much power concentrated in the hands of politicians. Politicians and bureaucrats cannot have favors to sell. The economy and the state need to move apart.