The house of the mayor of Rio de Janeiro.
|
Brazil is a democracy, with the president's term being 4 years. All Brazilian citizens 16 years or older can vote. People ages 18-69 years old must prove they are literate before voting. Voting is entirely optional.
There are 3 branches of the Brazilian National government. 1) Executive branch -- The president is elected, and serves 4 year terms. 2) Legislative branch -- The National Congress has 81 Federal Senate members (proportional to population per state) who serve 4 year terms. There are 513 members of the Chamber of Deputies. They have districts of equal population. They serve 8 year terms. 3) Judicial branch -- The Judges on the Supreme Federal Tribunal serve for life.This is like the U.S. Supreme Court, and their lower courts below it. There are 27 states in brazil, Rio de Janeiro being one of them (yes it is both a city, and a state), and more than 5500 municipalities, which are each run by an elected mayor. Rio is governed by a mayor, who appoints heads of administrative departments, and a Municipal Chamber which passes laws. The city of Rio is an important part of the state in which it is located and of which it is the capital, and the state governor and the mayor compete to obtain money for their state or city from the national government. Brazil has political parties. The major ones are the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), the Liberal Front Party (PFL), and the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB). More than 60% of the government's funds are tax based. This includes personal taxes, corperate, property, fuels, and on goods. The Brazilian governments, unfortunately, have reputations for being corrupt and not very good at solving the nations problem's, such as crime and poverty. |