POLITICS-BRAZIL: Early Polls Suggest a Lula Presidential Victory

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 12 2001 (IPS) - Political uncertainty will predominate in Brazil next year – at least until the presidential elections – given the strong possibility of a victory by former metalworker Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva and the governing coalition’s so-far chaotic efforts to prevent it.

This will be the fourth attempt by the founder and leader of the left-leaning Workers’ Party (PT) to reach the Brazilian presidency, but this time he faces much more favourable conditions.

Public opinion polls give Lula 30 percent support among respondents who intend to vote, and he has a much lower negative rating than the other pre-candidates for next year’s race, and his negative numbers are even below what he was seeing last year.

Furthermore, he is also the most visible figure of opposition to the current government, which is unpopular and battle weary following a series of economic crises.

Political anxiety will last longer than usual because the campaign season got an early, unofficial start this year, making it difficult to predict the outcome, Marcos Coimbra, head of the Vox Populi Institute, a polling firm, told IPS.

Everyone is seeking “the elimination of uncertainty too early in the process,” and are urging the ruling coalition and the opposition parties alike to pick their candidates in early 2002, although the elections are not scheduled to take place until Oct 6, with a run-off vote in November, Coimbra said.

Lula has the support of two main types of voters, said the expert. There are those who base their preferences on ideology, who defend leftist ideals regardless of whether they are members of the PT, and there are those who have “identified” with his leadership throughout the 1990s, “just like the fans of a football team,” with little effort made in informing themselves

This assures the PT candidate approximately a quarter of Brazil’s potential votes, which total approximately 110 million. But he still faces difficulties in conquering a portion of the remaining three-quarters, which represent people who generally consider Lula to have “insufficient training and experience” to serve as president of Brazil, according to Coimbra.

Lula only has a primary-level education, but he consolidated his role as a labour and political leader by heading the historic strikes that began in 1978 in Sao Bernardo do Campo, capital of the Brazilian automotive industry, outside Sao Paulo.

He later founded the CUT (Central Unica dos Trabalhadores), the country’s largest labour union, and also the PT. But as a politician he has only served one term as a legislative deputy. He has never held an executive post.

The PT made great strides in the last elections, winning the mayoral races in big cities like Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre, and the governorships in several states. But the electorate is still dubious about Lula’s preparedness to run the country, said Coimbra.

At any rate, the government’s poor image and the divisions plaguing the ruling coalition set a promising stage for the opposition, encouraging the proliferation of pre-candidates among their ranks.

Ciro Gomes, former Treasury minister, and Anthony Gartinho, governor of Rio de Janeiro state, are attempting to carve out a space for themselves as candidates for their socialist-leaning parties, which are more moderate than Lula or his PT. Polls give the two less than 10 percent of the electorate’s support.

Another potential contender is Itamar Franco, a nationalist who is governor of Minas Gerais state. He hopes to be chosen as the presidential candidate of the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), though he is a dissident and the party leaders support the government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

In the ruling coalition, the Brazilian Social-Democratic Party (PSDB) is divided between José Serra, who is now minister of Health, and Tasso Jereissati, governor of Ceará, a poor state in northeast Brazil.

The social democrats’ intention to keep their grip on power – though they would grant their partners the vice-presidency – not only faces the threat of Lula, but also challenges from within the coalition.

The Liberal Front Party (PFL) dreams of winning the presidency now that its pre-candidate, Roseana Sarney, has seen her popularity rise over the past few months, nearing 20 percent support from the electorate, according to opinion polls. Serra, the best-positioned social democrat, has no more than six percent support.

The fact that she is a woman apparently works in Sarney’s favour. A survey conducted by the National Industry Confederation found that most respondents think women are better than men for serving in the political sphere, saying they are more sensitive to social problems, less corrupt, better organised and more determined to get the job done.

PSDB leaders, who previously defended the unity of the coalition as the only way to prevent Lula from winning, now say the party will not rule out putting forth its own candidate, which would pave the way for total fragmentation of the bloc.

Polling expert Coimbra believes that a candidate from the governing coalition will only win next year’s presidential elections if he or she is able to convince the population that there will be “changes without total rupture.” The public’s rejection of the Cardoso government could be greater than its resistance to Lula’s inexperience, he explained.

Jereissati has acknowledged that there are “real possibilities” that the PT candidate could win, pointing out that the business sector and the middle-class are no longer nervous about living under a Lula-led government. “There would be no capital flight as was feared in the 1989 elections,” he said.

Nevertheless, the 2002 elections will still have some similarities to the balloting in 1989, when Lula lost by only a few votes, agree public opinion experts like Guadencio Torquato, a professor at the University of Sao Paulo. He predicts that next year’s elections will be the most hotly contested in Brazil’s history.

In the 1989 elections, Lula made it to the run-off vote, battling the young, upstart politician Fernando Collor de Mello, who won by a slim margin and was forced out in 1992 by corruption charges. The candidates representing the various traditional parties had split up the vote in the first round, as is likely to happen in 2002.