Leading up to this summer's Olympics, Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes is "keen to stress the positives," according to Joe Leahy of the FINANCIAL TIMES. He insists the 1.2M square meter Barra Olympic Park complex is "close to completion." Around him, workmen "install the last of the seats and a few athletes carry out final tests of the facilities." In "stark contrast to the sense of crisis and allegations of corruption that have dogged South America's first Olympics," Paes said, "Everything is well in hand, well-organized and practically ready." Brazilian politics are "engulfed in crisis," with President Dilma Rousseff facing impeachment in a "crucial Congress vote and her government seemingly unable to stop the economy from shrinking." Amid such problems, Paes, who at 46 has already spent half his life in politics, has "stepped in to fill the vacuum to become the public face of Rio 2016." He dismissed fears that Rousseff's possible impeachment "could leave the country without an elected president during the Olympics." Paes said that the government "is still functioning," and noted that Roussef opened a sports center in Rio last week. Paes said, "Brazil is no longer a banana republic ... we are living through an intense political crisis yet governments are still working." The mayor also rejected the idea that the Games "are elitist." He said that of the R$40B ($11.5B) spent on Olympic-inspired projects, 57% "was private sector money." He insisted that the majority of public cash "went to projects that will benefit the city," including dedicated bus links that have "more than trebled the proportion of the population who have access to mass transport" to 63%. Paes: "Who’s going to use the BRT [dedicated bus lines]? The rich kid who protests against inequality while travelling in his own car ... or the worker who will use the BRT to go to work and back to his house?" The mayor admitted that "some things are out of his control," such as delays to the rail extension to take visitors toward the Barra Olympic Park site and the clean-up of Rio's polluted bay. He said that those were matters "for the state government" (FT, 4/12).
