Rio Protests and the Olympics 2016

Recently Oliver Wainwright wrote a blog article on plans for Rio Olympics 2016 and their legacy. ?He outlined the plans for the Olympics and their supposed transformation following. ?Important to the discussion as he points out is the “growing national discontent about he amount of public money being spent on both the Olympics and the 2014 World Cup.” ?And at the heart of that pressing issue is one more fundamental: ?political corruption. ?The public will not be appeased by promises of legacy planning when they know that the prospects are excellent that those plans will not happen or that they will happen in a form that will not benefit the poor and the middle class. ?The best example of how wrong-headed the decision-making can go is the news that “Donald Trump plans to build a wall of mirror-glass towers expected to displace 1,000 local residents in the process of “bringing a Trumpesque flair” to Brazil.” ?Is it possible that the mayor of Rio who exclaimed “This is the Rio we want” in reference to the towers is completely ignorant of Trump’s reputation? ?Wainwright quotes Altair Antunes Cumaraes, head of the residents’ group fighting some of the planning: ?”The Olympics only last 27 days so this is really all about real estate speculation not sport.” ?Exactly. ?As a colleague suggested to me ?”Rio could stay special by NOT importing Trump.”