For thousands of years, the Olympics have served as the showcase of the world’s best athletes, a point of national pride for the host country, and the focus of headlines around the world. 2016 hasn’t been any different; the opening ceremonies on August 5 were a brilliant display on Brazil’s part to present their history to the world and gave us our grand opening for this year’s Olympics. This is all in spite of Brazil’s recent social and political problems.

One of the construction companies contracted to build some of the Olympic facilities and aid in renovating Rio’s port, Odebrecht, has recently been revealed to have paid 316 politicians from all of Brazil’s major political parties on the municipal, state, and federal levels. A big name in this particular scandal (don’t worry, there’s more names) is Mayor Eduardo Paes of Rio de Janeiro; he is the likely recipient of about a million dollars as a payment for rewarding Odebrecht the contract to build a subway line between the beach and the Olympic Village.

Supposedly on Odebrecht’s bribe list is President Dilma Rousseff, although it wouldn’t matter too much if she were on the list because…*queue dramatic music*

On August 10, the Brazilian Federal Senate voted to begin the last phase in impeaching President Rousseff. This phase officially makes Pres. Rousseff a defendant and hands all presidential authority to an interim president, Michel Temer. Later this month, possibly even during the Olympics, Pres. Rousseff will be put on trial before the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and ultimately judged by the Federal Senate who voted over a two-thirds majority in order to enter this phase of impeachment.

This likely means that Rousseff will not win her case. The reason she is being impeached is not just due to evidence of corruption in her administration, but what is called “budgetary manipulation”. For the last few years, Brazil is in the worst recession in its history since the 1930’s; part of what has taken so long for the economy to recover was the manipulation of the federal budget, book-cooking schemes, and falsification of economic data ordered by Pres. Rousseff in order to hide the true state of the nation’s economy.

All of this is glancing over reports of human rights abuses in the uniquely Brazilian invention of the favelas, harsh suppression of protests against the government, and literally anything happening to Brazil’s rainforests, and what do we get? We get a picture of international solidarity and thrilling competitions framed by a nation in crisis, without a cohesive agenda for what happens after the Olymp—wait, Michael Phelps just won another gold medal!