By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 5 1996 (IPS)

President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s narrow focus on pushing through a constitutional amendment that would prolong his term in office has shifted other reforms — including some considered key to the economy — onto the back burner.

The proposed constitutional amendment concerns re-election of the president for a second four-year sojourn. Opposition politicians are facing pressure from international financial markets and elsewhere to approve the amendment — so the government can get on with the job.

Planning Minister Antonio Kandir says re-election of Cardoso in the October 1998 elections would mean up to eight percent economic growth and continued strong inflow of foreign capital.

But the municipal elections that concluded on Nov. 15 with the second round of voting in 31 of Brazil’s largest cities did not favour the governing alliance’s plans.

Sao Paulo Mayor Paulo Maluf, whose chances of running as a presidential candidate received a boost in the recent elections, has launched a campaign against the proposed reform.

Historically voted down in Brazil, re-election has only recently begun to make its appearance in Latin America, with incumbents in Peru and Argentina attempting to change their constituiton to prolong their stay in power.

In Peru, the government wants to hold a referendum to determine whether President Alberto Fujimori can stand for a third term. And Carlos Menem in Argentina makes no bones about his aspirations to a third period in office.

Maluf is in favour of the reelection of executive branch officials. But he argues that officials serving in the present administration should not be eligible because they were elected within the present system, which prohibits re-election.

Providing them with that opportunity in the midst of their term would be “casuistic” — a term used in Brazil to refer to the changing of rules according to circumstancial interests — Maluf argued in a recent speech to the special commission of the Chamber of Deputies that is studying the proposed amendment.

But Cardoso contends that excluding current executive officials from constitutional reform implementing re-election would be discriminatory. The president has been careful to specify that he is in favour of reelection as a general rule, not for his own benefit.

Meanwhile, the governing alliance is making an all-out effort to push the amendment through.

Former presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the left-wing Workers Party accuses the government of concentrating its efforts on the proposal at the expense of the country’s economic and social problems.

Maluf, head of the conservative Brazilian Progressive Party (PPB), has blocked the current officials’ possibilities for reelection by forging a temporary alliance with the left.

He has also threatened to block the government’s plan to call an extraordinary session of Congress to vote on the amendment during the January recess. Under the existing constitution, extraordinary sessions can be convened “in case of emergency or relevant public interest”. According to Maluf this is not covered in the instant case.

The Mayor of Sao Paulo, which is the country’s largest metropolis, has also fingered several members of the government, including Vice-President Marco Maciel, as well as ruling coalition legislators, as having voted against re-election when the constitution was reformed in 1994.

Several of the accused deputies retorted that Maluf himself had changed his mind after previously supporting reelection. The battle over the amendment is threatening the unity of the governing coalition, which includes Maluf’s PPB.

The PPB has a representative in the government, Minister of Industry and Commerce, Francisco Dornelles. The minister is working to get the amendment enacted and warns that he will resign if his party comes up with a counter-proposal.

There are dissidents within Cardoso’s own Party of the Brazilian Social Democracy, like former finance minister Ciro Gomes who recently argued against the possibility of re-election before the commission of deputies debating the proposal.

With the issue capturing public attention, proposed constitutional amendments previously considered vital to the economy — reforms of the public administration, the tax system and social security — have been put on the back burner.

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