POLITICS-BRAZIL: Left Makes Strides in Local Elections

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 3 2000 (IPS) - Brazil’s left, headed by the Workers Party (PT), posted a good showing in Sunday’s municipal elections, winning the mayor’s offices of several large cities, and setting itself up in good stead as the favourite for the run-off for the mayorship of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city.

Sunday’s were Brazil’s first totally computerised elections, which made for a fast tallying of the vote, despite the immense electorate of 109.8 million people — in a country with a total population of 168 million — registered to choose mayors and town councillors from a pool of 382,915 candidates in a total of 5,559 municipalities.

The vote-counting, which took less than 24 hours, could have been even faster had it not been for peculiar difficulties in the least populated parts of the country, said the president of the Superior Electoral Court, Neri da Silveira.

In Sao Felix de Xingú, in west-central Brazil, indigenous demonstrators surrounded the headquarters of the local electoral authority to protest the re-election of the mayor, while heavy rain made it impossible for helicopters to fly into a number of villages and towns in the Amazon jungle to pick up ballot boxes.

But the chances of fraud were near zero, according to the Electoral Court. In previous elections, in which voting and tallying were done manually, complaints and legal charges frequently led to new scrutiny of the results, often delaying the final announcement for weeks.

Analysts highlight the strengthening of the leftist opposition, and the growth of the Liberal Front Party (PFL) within the broad governing coalition, as the most outstanding results of the elections.

The PT practically equalled the three large ruling alliance parties in terms of the number of votes — around 20 percent of the total — it earned nationwide. But while the three governing parties won more than 1,000 mayor’s offices each, by mid-afternoon Monday, the PT had chalked up only 166.

However, almost all of them were large cities and state capitals, where national public opinion is formed. The PT will need just two more elections before it is ready to win the presidency, predicted the honorary chairman of the party, Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva, a former steelworker and trade unionist who has run for president three times since 1989.

The PT virtually doubled the number of votes it won in Brazil’s 26 state capitals, while garnering a third of the votes in the country’s 59 cities with more than 200,000 voters, stressed PT chairman and parliamentary Deputy José Dirceu.

The party’s growth was confirmed in Sao Paulo, where only some unforeseen disaster could stand in the way of the triumph of its candidate, the psychologist Marta Suplicy, in the second round due Oct 29.

In the first round, Suplicy took 38.01 percent of the votes — more than double the 17.35 percent won by her conservative rival Paulo Maluf. The PT candidate’s advantage is strengthened by the fact that according to the polls, more than half of Sao Paulo voters say they would not cast their ballot for Maluf.

Other important political forces in Sao Paulo, like the social democrats and socialists, are hostile to Maluf, and are thus expected to back the PT candidate.

In fact, Suplicy is in the strongest position of any candidate participating in the second round in 31 cities with more than 200,000 voters.

Winning the city government of Sao Paulo, where the PT was born and where it has its strongest power base, the party would consolidate its hegemony over the left and in the ranks of the opposition to the government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

That would give a major boost to the “red wave” from the south, as a study by Brazilian and French political scientists, coordinated by Cesar Romero Jacob in Rio de Janeiro’s Catholic University, describes the PT’s growing area of influence.

The PT has grown strong in Brazil’s southern region, governing the state of Rio Grande do Sul for nearly four years, and the state’s capital Porto Alegre for the past 12. In Sunday’s elections, the party won, or will seek in the run-off, the governments of major cities in two other southern states, Paraná and Santa Catarina.

In the interior of the state of Sao Paulo, the PT won the mayor’s offices in several large cities, and is the favourite for the Oct 29 elections in others like Santos, South America’s largest port, and Campinas, Brazil’s “technological capital.”

The left also chalked up unexpected results in state capitals where it was seen as incapable of taking on the local powers-that- be.

In Fortaleza, the capital of the northeastern state of Ceará, for example, Deputy Inacio Arruda of the Communist Party of Brazil is threatening the re-election of Mayor Juraci Magalhaes, of the Brazilian Democratic Movement, one of the three large parties in the governing coalition.

In Curitiba, the capital of Paraná, another mayor who was seen as undefeatable, Cassio Taniguchi of the PFL, has reason to worry due to the 35.4 percent of votes taken in the first round by PT candidate Angelo Vanhoni, who is expected to win the backing of other opposition candidates in the run-off.

And in several cities — Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul; Londrina, a large agricultural town in Paraná; and Maceió, the capital of Alagoas — the two candidates facing off on Oct 29 are both on the left.

Curiously enough, traditionally left-leaning Río de Janeiro, which tends to vote with the opposition, is an exception, with two right-wing parties getting ready to dispute the mayor’s office in the second round.