President Lula is booed in major public event.
On July 13th, the XV Pan American Games opened in Rio de Janeiro. The tradition says that the official declaration to Let the Games Begin is made by the Chief of State or Chief of Government of the host country; in the case of Brazil, that would be President Lula.
All recent public surveys have shown that the President has a high approval rate, despite a succession of cases of corruption involving Lula, his Cabinet and several of his allies in the Congress.
So, it was a surprise that Lula had been booed by the majority of the 90,000 people who attended the opening of the Games. The video below shows some scenes.
The President was booed in six different occasions; everytime that his image was shown in the big screen of the stadium, he was booed; everytime he tried to speech, or even when his name was mentioned, he was booed. When the name of the Governor of Rio, Sérgio Cabral, was mentioned, there were applauses and boos; when César Maia, mayor of Rio, was mentioned, there were mostly applauses.
In the end, the official opening was declared by the President of the Brazilian Olympic Committee, Carlos Nuzman. Lula knew that he would face a very awkward and embarassing situation, if he continued appearing.
Update July 16th: Lula and other authorities said that they had reasons to believe that there had been a concerted movement to hostilize the President (according to Lula, the city of Rio would have given away tickets to the ceremony, and those guests would be the responsible for the booes). Mayor Cesar Maia acknowledged the free tickets, but remembered that official agencies like Caixa Econômica and Banco do Brasil purchased a much bigger lot ot tickets to be given as courtesy (hence, the ‘official’ freeloaders would easily outnumber the ‘hostile’ freeloaders).
Just to remember: it was the entire stadium, not small groups, which showed their discontentment with the President. There were tickets costing R$ 10, R$ 20, and up to R$ 800. As César Maia correctly said, nobody can control a crowd of 90,000 people inside the Maracanã. The manifestation was spontaneous.
