POLITICS-BRAZIL: Internal and External Turmoil Give Left a Boost

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 25 2001 (IPS) - An internal political crisis and external pressures on the economy are undermining governability in Brazil, and opening up new possibilities for a triumph by the left in the October 2002 elections.

A new survey by the National Confederation of Transport (CNT) indicates that President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s popularity ratings have dipped once again, after rallying in the past few months.

Cardoso’s positive image rating fell from 33.3 percent of respondents in March to 29.7 percent this month, according to the results of the poll released Tuesday. Meanwhile, the proportion of those holding a negative image of the president rose from 16.2 to 18.9 percent.

The view that the president is not doing enough to fight corruption was shared by 58.8 percent of those interviewed, indicating a loss of confidence in the government, said CNT president Clesio Andrade.

The scandals that have turned the Senate into a kind of policing agency lately with the spate of investigations and probes, and which have virtually paralysed its legislative work, are dealing a harsh blow to the credibility of the country’s lawmakers, and tainting the government as well.

Three key Senate leaders of the largest parties of the governing coalition are likely to lose their seats and to be banned from politics for eight years in cases involving corruption and tampering with the Senate’s secret electronic voting system.

The investigations of the three senators, in turn, have fuelled internal divisions in the ruling coalition.

Economic growth, which stood at 4.2 percent last year, thus shoring up the Cardoso administration’s image, has also fallen back into uncertainty.

The ongoing economic and political crisis in neighbouring Argentina is signalled as the main factor in the 13.4 percent depreciation of Brazil’s national currency, the real, against the dollar so far this year. Predictions of a recession in the United States further aggravate the outlook for Brazil.

The instability of the real highlights Brazil’s heavy dependence on foreign capital, the inflows of which are easing due to turbulence in other countries, especially Argentina, the second- biggest member of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) trade bloc after Brazil.

The interventions by the Central Bank, which has sold dollars and raised the already high interest rates, have so far failed to curb the fall of the real, which slid 4.3 percent this month alone, and which has affected efforts to keep inflation under control while hurting economic activity.

All of which is giving a new incentive to the leader of the left in Brazil, the Workers Party’s (PT) Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva, to announce his plans to run in the 2002 presidential elections.

Lula, a former metalworker and trade unionist, has not yet formally confirmed his candidacy, despite the fact that he is the front-runner in the polls, with 25 to 30 percent of respondents saying they would vote for him.

Lula’s defeats in the past three presidential elections, which occurred after he led the polls for lengthy periods of time, demonstrated just how difficult it is for the left to win in a country whose voters have been largely conservative up to now.

But the succession of economic, political, ethical and social crises that have rocked the ruling coalition have provided the opposition with new hope a year and a half prior to the elections.

Lula’s hesitation encouraged Senator Eduardo Suplicy – a champion of the fight against corruption and of the struggle for ensuring a decent minimum income for the entire population – to dispute the PT nomination under the argument that he had received “many displays of support in the streets and over the Internet.”

The government’s misfortunes are also bolstering the dreams of other opposition leaders with respect to the 2002 presidential elections, like the governor of the eastern state of Minas Gerais, Itamar Franco, a former president (1992-94), and Ciro Gomes, a former finance minister and ex-governor of the state of Ceará in the northeast.

The two are already discussing a possible alliance. Franco, the leader of a nationalist current, agreed to be the vice- presidential running-mate on a ticket led by Gomes, a Social Democrat of the Popular Socialist Party, if Gomes continues to surpass him in the polls by early next year.

The opposition’s hopes are growing in the face of the possibility of a split within the governing coalition, whose leaders acknowledge that without unity between the parties currently in power it will be difficult to get a successor to Cardoso elected who would give continuity to the current administration’s policies.

The discrepancies between the ruling parties could be aggravated by the investigation of a violation of parliamentary secrecy norms in the Jun 28 session in which the Senate voted to throw out lawmaker Luiz Estevao for misappropriation of public funds and perjury.

Senator José Roberto Arruda attempted Monday to play down his role in the scandal, in a speech in which he blamed then-president of the Senate Antonio Carlos Magalhaes for ordering the tampering with the electronic voting panel.

But since both senators took part in the incident, and because they belong to different parties in the coalition – Arruda to the Social Democracy Party and Magalhaes to the Liberal Front Party – Arruda’s accusation has turned the scandal being investigated by the Senate’s Council on Ethics into a dispute between parties.

Sanctions of differing severity for Arruda and Magalhaes would aggravate long-standing discord between the two parties, while a banishment from politics for Magalhaes, the undisputed political boss of the eastern state of Bahia, would constitute an “earthquake,” in the words of Globo TV commentator Franklin Martins.

The governing coalition is also suffering another trauma. The current president of the Senate and head of the third large ruling party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement, Jader Barbalho, is implicated in several corruption scandals currently under investigation by the Federal Police and Public Ministry (office of the public prosecutor).

A parliamentary investigatory commission targetting corruption in several government agencies and institutions is likely to be created. But President Cardoso has opposed the idea, thus risking a further plunge in his popularity, because the probe would further weaken his government.