The Rwandan journalist who asked David Cameron what he was doing in her country while half of his constituency was flooded showed a more acute insight into the politics of disaster responses than some western commentators have displayed towards Brazil's recent aviation disaster.
Last week's crash at Sao Paulo's Congonhas airport, which killed almost 200 people, came just 10 months after the country's previous worst-ever air disaster, in which 154 people died. The intervening period has seen a series of strikes and go-slows that have plunged Brazil's aviation industry into chaos.
Air traffic controllers, fearing they were being blamed for that crash, have been protesting at outdated radar and radio equipment and poor salaries. Brazil's air traffic control system is still under the control of its ministry of defence and just over a month ago, a number of the strike's leaders were imprisoned for breaches of military discipline. However, many Brazilians agree with their claims that the current system is in need of far-reaching and fundamental reform.
Yesterday President Lula sacked his defence minister, Waldir Pires, an ageing leftist whose handling of the aviation crisis has been widely criticised as ineffective.
Pires had struggled to assert his authority over the military, which is in charge of the controllers, and he became the public face of Brazil's air travel woes. He will be replaced by Nelson Jobim, a retired supreme court judge and former justice minister, who is a member of a centrist political party (PMDB) that is also represented in Lula's coalition government. One of Jobim's first tasks will probably be to find a replacement for the head of the national airports authority Infraero, Jose Carlos Pereira, whose leadership has also been called into question during the crisis.
Another high-profile casualty of the tragedy is likely to be Martha Suplicy, a former governor of Sao Paulo and current minister for tourism who is also a member of Lula's own Brazilian Workers party (PT).
Suplicy is a key member of the "Sao Paulo faction" of PT, which has dominated the party in recent years and was most closely associated with the so-called mensalao scandal, which rocked Lula's first term. She had been widely considered as a possible presidential candidate for PT when Lula steps down, but committed career suicide a couple of months ago when she quipped that Brazilian air travellers should stop getting so stressed out about their journeys and "relaxa e goza". This roughly translates into English as an invitation to join the "mile high club" and Suplicy, a former sexologist, was subsequently forced to apologise for the remark.
President Lula has also been criticised for his initial slowness in responding to the crash. He was booed by a section of the crowd when he made an appearance at the Pan American games in Rio and the Brazilian media have accused him of "abdicating his responsibilities" and presiding over an "authority blackout". His announcement, last Friday, that the number of flights at Congonhas would be reduced and that a location for a new airport in Sao Paulo would be announced within 90 days has been dismissed by some as too little, too late.
However, those who see this latest tragedy as an indictment of Lula's record in office are misunderstanding Brazilian politics and the enduring popularity of its president. Lula was easily re-elected last year and his personal popularity remains high because most Brazilians are considerably better off than when he came to office.
Lula's social programmes, and increases to the minimum wage, have benefited the poor and cut the poverty rate by five percentage points, but his government's financial orthodoxy has also increased the confidence of the business community, which has attracted foreign investment. Crucially, by controlling inflation, Lula's government has both created a business-friendly environment and ensured that the measures to raise the income of poor Brazilians are not immediately eroded by rising prices. Although Brazil's economic growth has been slower than some of its competitors, it has been stable and Lula's rejection of economic populism is strengthening the country's long-term development.
Ironically, as Brazil's finance minister, Guido Mantega, recently observed, the real roots of its aviation crisis can actually be found in this economic development. The Brazilian economy is outgrowing its regulatory structure and this is becomingly increasingly apparent in the need for reform in a whole range of areas. Such reforms will need to tackle a range of vested interests, many of which are deeply embedded from the years of the Brazilian dictatorship, and will neither be a popular nor easy task.
One of the reasons why more corruption scandals are currently coming to light in Brazil is because the authorities are allowing investigations to take place. Sections of the Brazilian opposition, who are the most vigorous in denouncing them, presided over far worse practices when they were in office. Similarly, there are no quick fixes to Brazil's aviation crises because Lula inherited a legacy of mismanagement from those who are now seeking to make political capital from this latest tragedy.
