RIO DE JANEIRO // Brazil may not know who its president will be in eight months’ time, and Olympic athletes will not have TVs in their rooms because of the country’s recession, but Rio de Janeiro is still promising a “spectacular” 2016 Games.
With its budget in tatters because of the economic crisis and the nation shamed by not cleaning pathogenic sewage from Guanabara Bay – the Rio venue for Olympic regattas – criticism has been rife.
Organisers have preferred to stress that the work to host the August 5-21 Olympic Games and 10,000 athletes from 206 countries has been without delays, and improvements to Rio’s public transport network will be a lasting legacy.
“Rio today is 80 per cent ready, in April it will be 100 per cent, and during the Games it will be 120 per cent,” boasted the communications director for the Rio 2016 organising committee, Mario Andrada, in an interview with Agence France-Presse. “The Olympics are going to be spectacular.”
Unsaid is the organisers’ hope that the political chaos in South America’s biggest country, wrought by the threat of impeachment for deeply unpopular President Dilma Rousseff over allegedly fiddled public accounts, will be settled by then.
Or that at least anti-government discontent will not spill out into the streets as it did in 2013, a year before Brazil hosted the football World Cup.
Faced with its worst recession in decades, double-digit inflation, swelling unemployment, and a corruption scandal sinking the state oil company Petrobras, the Rio 2016 committee has pledged to spend only “the money we have,” Andrada said.
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That means slashing five to 20 per cent from the US$5billion (Dh18.36bn) budget, for example by not installing televisions in athletes’ rooms, getting by with fewer computer printers, and offering Brazilian meat-beans-and-rice dishes to invited VIPs instead of fancy meals.
“The country is going through an enormous crisis. We can’t be sending out a different message, [or] leaving debts to be paid by the government or, worse, by society,” Andrada said.
However, Rio 2016 will cut back “nothing from the tracks, nothing from the sports, nothing from the ceremony, nothing from the legacy”.
After the Paris attacks in which Islamist gunmen killed 130 people, Brazil is to oversee the biggest integrated security operation in its history: 85,000 police, soldiers and agents, in coordination with 80 countries.
“We are constantly working as if a threat were imminent,” the head of the Brazilian intelligence service, Wilson Trezza, told Agence France-Presse.
The Rio 2016 committee also assured that “Rio will be the safest city in the world during the Games”.
But there have been some unsettling security issues of late, such as the breaking up of a ring producing falsified birth certificates that allowed dozens of Syrians to obtain Brazilian passports between 2012 and 2014. Several of the Syrians are still fugitives.
But beyond the security, what many in Rio, dubbed “the marvellous city” but over the past few years converted into a giant construction site, want to know is, will it be a better place to live after the Olympics?
Lamartine Pereira da Costa, an Olympic Games expert at Rio’s State University, believes the answer is yes, based on the urban improvements seen in Barcelona after it hosted the 1992 Games.
“Things here work so badly that they can’t get any worse,” he said.
“For example, the percentage of the population using public transport will go from 38 per cent to 66 per cent after the Games – it’s the great achievement of Rio de Janeiro.”
But the People’s Committee for the Cup and the Olympics, a citizens’ group critical of the Games, predicted that Rio will end up more “segregated” afterward.
It pointed to the forced relocation of more than 4,000 families to make room for the Olympic works, as well as skyrocketing real estate prices benefiting only a handful of wealthy businessmen, insufficient and inefficient transport, and a violent and racist police force.
“This will be an Olympiad of exclusion,” predicted Orlando Santos Junior, a university professor coordinating the group’s efforts.
“We are losing opportunities to promote social integration. Unfortunately the city will be neither fairer nor more democratic” after August 2016, he said.
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At a glance
Global events: Much of the UK’s economic woes were blamed on “increased global uncertainty”, which can be interpreted as the economic impact of the Ukraine war and the uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Growth forecasts: Cut for 2025 from 2 per cent to 1 per cent. The OBR watchdog also estimated inflation will average 3.2 per cent this year
Welfare: Universal credit health element cut by 50 per cent and frozen for new claimants, building on cuts to the disability and incapacity bill set out earlier this month
Spending cuts: Overall day-to day-spending across government cut by £6.1bn in 2029-30
Tax evasion: Steps to crack down on tax evasion to raise “£6.5bn per year” for the public purse
Defence: New high-tech weaponry, upgrading HM Naval Base in Portsmouth
Housing: Housebuilding to reach its highest in 40 years, with planning reforms helping generate an extra £3.4bn for public finances
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
Mina Cup winners
Under 12 – Minerva Academy
Under 14 – Unam Pumas
Under 16 – Fursan Hispania
Under 18 – Madenat
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Four motivational quotes from Alicia's Dubai talk
“The only thing we need is to know that we have faith. Faith and hope in our own dreams. The belief that, when we keep going we’re going to find our way. That’s all we got.”
“Sometimes we try so hard to keep things inside. We try so hard to pretend it’s not really bothering us. In some ways, that hurts us more. You don’t realise how dishonest you are with yourself sometimes, but I realised that if I spoke it, I could let it go.”
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TKO round 2
Catchweight 90kg
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Split points decision
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TKO round 1
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TKO round 1
Catchweight 100kg
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Rear neck choke round 1
Featherweight
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TKO round 2
Welterweight
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TKO round 1
Middleweight
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Unanimous points decision
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Welterweight
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TKO round 1
Bantamweight
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TKO round 3
Lightweight
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Middleweight
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Lightweight
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The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
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