Brazil vows best World Cup despite woes

Brazil is seeking to shrug off dire problems threatening its preparations for the 2014 World Cup by pledging it will be ready to host the top football event no matter what -- and that it will be the best Cup in history. But the litany of woes -- including a strike by workers revamping the flagship stadium, a legal tussle over expansion of the country's biggest airport, a resurgence of armed clashes with police in 'pacified' Rio slums, and a slew of corruption allegations -- are weighing heavily on the minds of FIFA, sports fans, corporate sponsors and politicians. The troubles also point to the tough path ahead for Brazil as it gears up for the 2016 Olympic Games. "Only by working together will we be able to overcome all the obstacles to put on the best World Cup of all time," Planning Minister Miriam Belchior said Wednesday. Sports Minister Orlando Silva acknowledged the concerns over getting Brazil's creaking infrastructure into acceptable shape. "Stadiums and airports are the essential pillars of this World Cup," he said, emphasizing that the former "is already a resolved matter." Brazil now has just 1,000 days to prove it is up to the task. When the country won the right to host the World Cup, in 2007, its prospects looked rosy: Latin America's biggest economy, famed for its samba and soccer, was ambitious and ready to show off its international credentials. Today, as the still-prosperous country braces for inevitable fall-out from the financial crisis gripping Europe and the United States, and as its economy runs into its own domestic headwinds, the tale has changed. A decade of blistering growth and foreign investment has failed to upgrade Brazil's third-world infrastructure, and now money is harder to come by. Stadiums across the country were deemed inadequate and have had to be renovated -- or, in the case of the main one in Sao Paulo planned for the opening game and one in the city of Natal -- built anew. Nine stadiums are scheduled to be completed in December 2012, but deadlines in Brazil are notoriously unreliable. But Brazil's most famous theater for football, Rio's Maracana Stadium, which is likely to be the venue for the World Cup final, is at the center of a labor dispute. Workers there have been on strike for two weeks demanding more pay. Partial strikes in the big cities of Belo Horizonte and Salvador de Bahia are also slowing things down. The state of roads between the venue cities remains pitiful. Meanwhile, Brazil's airports are saturated, unable to keep up with burgeoning current traffic, let alone the added demands of a World Cup or the Olympics. Work has not even started on five of the 13 airports earmarked for development, and the expansion of Sao Paulo's international Guarulhos airport -- the biggest in the country -- is the subject of legal wrangling. Late Wednesday a federal court overruled a judge who this week had suspended work at Guarulhos on the grounds that it had not been open to tender. Government lawyers succeeded in portraying the expansion as an "emergency" requiring the bending of usual rules, but more legal scrutiny looms. Attorney general Roberto Gurgel last week called for the suspension of a bill allowing flexibility in the contracting of World Cup and Olympic Games infrastructure work, arguing it opened the door to corruption. The sports minister responded that transparency rules would be applied, despite the skepticism of many who note Brazil's long history of corruption. "Brazil is a democracy. There are legal decisions that can be challenged, as will certainly be the case with the one concerning Sao Paulo's airport... Our strength is in promoting transparency," Silva said. President Dilma Rousseff's government has, however, reeled from a string of corruption scandals that have seen four top officials step down in the past three months. At the same time, fears have returned that Rio's slums, or favelas, could be a major security headache. In a favela authorities had claimed was swept clear of drug gangs, a group of heavily armed criminals last week opened fire on soldiers, triggering a long gunfight. The overall situation has caused concern in many quarters, and FIFA, the International Federation of Football that controls the World Cup, has until recently been critical of Brazil's efforts. But now FIFA is giving its support, expressing confidence that Brazil will deliver. Rousseff herself has sought to allay worries. On Monday, she told Globo TV that the stadiums would be ready "in time for the World Cup."