POLITICS-BRAZIL: Candidates to Take Advantage of Free TV Air Time

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 21 2002 (IPS) - The free TV air time granted the candidates for Brazil’s October elections favours the ruling party’s presidential candidate José Serra, giving him a chance to shore up his waning popularity and improve his position in the polls.

Serra will have more free air time on TV and radio than the other candidates for the Oct 6 elections, because the parties that back him have greater representation in Congress.

But Serra is third in the polls, with only one-third of the ratings enjoyed by the leftist Luis Inácio Lula da Silva and half of the ratings of centre-left candidate Ciro Gomes.

For the next 45 days, the various candidates running for the presidency, state governorships, and the legislature will have a combined daily total of two hours of free media time.

The time the candidates are allotted is proportionate to the parliamentary representation of the parties that back them.

Serra will have 20 minutes, 46 seconds on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, as well as five half-minute spots a day during regular programming time. That is double the amount of time that went to front-runner Lula, and slightly more than the time given to Gomes.

That advantage is due to the fact that Serra is backed by the governing coalition, which is made up of two major forces in parliament – President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s Brazilian Social Democracy Party and the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement.

Lula, on the other hand, is backed by his leftist Workers’ Party and the small Liberal Party, while Gomes is running at the head of the Labourist Front, made up of three smaller forces.

A fourth candidate, Anthony Garotinho, is approaching Serra in the opinion polls, although analysts say he has no chance of becoming a real contender for the presidency.

Due to the small size of Garotinho’s Brazilian Socialist Party, he is entitled to just four minutes and 27 seconds of TV time per day.

The governing coalition is staking its bets on media time to catapult Serra to at least second place on Oct 6, which would enable him to dispute the Oct 27 run-off with the winner of the first round.

However, that possibility seems remote, given the plunge in popularity of President Cardoso, which has been aggravated by the severe financial crisis shaking the country.

Nevertheless, the hopes of ruling coalition leaders are based on the traditional volatility of Brazilian voters, as revealed by opinion polls in the past few months, and by past elections.

For months, Serra’s ratings stood at just seven percent, after which they climbed to 20 percent between March and June, putting him in second place behind poll favourite Lula. But he then lost that position to Gomes.

At the start of his TV and radio campaign Tuesday, Serra emphasised his promise to create eight million new jobs, and his supporters’ claim that he was “the world’s best health minister.”

Serra is also highlighting his impoverished childhood and his training and background as an economist.

In addition, he is capitalising on the social projects designed by his vice-presidential running-mate, parliamentary Deputy Rita Camata, which enable him to promise “continuity” of the “positive aspects” of the Cardoso administration – economic stability – but with greater concern for social questions.

Lula, who is sure to go to the run-off with at least 30 percent of the votes – as he has done in every presidential election since 1989 – kicked off his own TV campaign discussing his platform for economic growth, based on development of the domestic market.

In his first TV programme, the former trade unionist noted that the state-run oil company Petrobrás was contracting out the construction of three oil drilling platforms to companies in Singapore and other countries, despite the fact that Brazil’s shipyards are perfectly capable of building them.

That means 1.5 billion dollars are being transferred abroad, at a time when the country is in desperate need of hard currency, said Lula, who also pointed to the loss of “25,000 jobs over the space of three years.” That would not happen if he were elected president, he asserted.

Meanwhile, the younger Gomes, 44, and Garotinho, 42, stressed their successful administrations as mayors and state governors – by implied contrast with former steelworker Lula, who has no such experience.

In his first appearance in the TV campaign, a serene Gomes sought to counter his feisty image. In the future, he will appear with his vice-presidential running-mate, Patricia Pillar, a popular soap opera star.

Although the former governor is presenting himself as a centre- left candidate, he has the backing of some of Brazil’s most conservative political leaders.

Lula and Gomes both face the tough task of calling for “change” to the current economic model, but without fuelling the jitters on the financial market, which forced Cardoso to negotiate a new 30 billion dollar bail-out led by the International Monetary Fund.

On Monday, Cardoso invited the four main presidential candidates to a meeting, in which they all pledged to live up to the commitments signed with the IMF, in order to prevent further turmoil.

However, the financial markets would clearly prefer a victory by Cardoso’s chosen successor, and will only calm down if Serra makes headway in the polls, say observers.