ELECTIONS-BRAZIL: There’s No Stopping Lula

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 27 2006 (IPS) - Barring an unforeseen calamity, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will be reelected Sunday to another four-year term, despite a series of scandals that have rocked his leftist Workers’ Party (PT) and put his government in the sights of the press and the opposition for the past year and a half.

Lula’s rating stood at 61 to 63 percent in four nationwide polls carried out this week, reflecting a surprising recovery after his failure to score a first-round victory on Oct. 1, when the repercussions of the latest scandal were still benefiting his current rival, former Sao Paulo governor Geraldo Alckmin.

The scandal broke on Sept. 15, when members of the PT election campaign team were arrested with 1.7 million reals (783,000 dollars) that were allegedly to go towards the purchase of a secret dossier to be used in a smear campaign against opposition candidates.

The police seem to be making progress towards identifying the source of the illegal funds, which included 248,800 dollars brought in from the United States. At least six members of the PT are under investigation, but it appears unlikely that their participation will be proven.

Lula managed to overcome the gradual erosion of his popularity, mobilised his ministers and allies, sealed new alliances with leaders of a number of parties, including opposition forces, and launched a counterattack, accusing Alckmin and his Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) of planning a wave of privatisations and public spending cuts to the government’s social programmes.

Instead of Lula, Alckmin was now on the defensive, as he scrambled to deny that he would privatise national symbols like the Banco do Brasil or the Petrobras oil company, or that he would eliminate the “family stipend” programme that benefits 11 million poor families and helped Lula win an overwhelming majority of votes in the impoverished north and northeast.

“Lie” was the word that was most often repeated this month by Alckmin, who failed to present a single novel policy proposal that might tempt voters to seek a change from Lula, who is reaping the electoral benefits of a stable economy, the generation of jobs, and social policies that are slowly chipping away at the extreme inequality that has long characterised Brazil.

The fates of the governments of 10 states will also be decided in Sunday’s run-off vote. The majority of the favourites are Lula allies – another factor that bolsters the president’s chances of reelection and could contribute to governability in his second term.

The PT and its possible allies already govern a majority of Brazil’s 27 states. The leftist ruling party, although weakened by last year’s string of corruption scandals and the more recent “dossier case,” triumphed in four states and could win another on Sunday – a record for the PT since its founding in 1980.

Although it is divided, the PT’s biggest ally, the centrist Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), has already won four states and is disputing six others, with victory likely in three, according to the polls.

The Brazilian Socialist Party, a reliable ally on which Lula can count, will govern three states.

Governors from opposition parties have also sought out alliances with Lula, such as Blairo Maggi, governor-elect of Mato Grosso, an agricultural powerhouse in the west, who rebelled against the leadership of his Popular Socialist Party.

Another was Roseana Sarney, the front-runner in the northeastern state of Maranhão, who has been threatened with expulsion from the opposition Liberal Front Party (PFL) because of her ties with Lula.

The lack of party loyalty was particularly marked in the current elections, which has strengthened the arguments of those who are calling for profound political and electoral reforms, as a means of fighting corruption as well.

The PT needs to be “refounded” after the ethical crisis that led to the loss of its most prominent leaders, argue several of the party’s surviving leaders, like Tarso Genro, current minister of institutional relations, and Marta Suplicy, former mayor of the southern city of Sao Paulo.

Former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso acknowledged that his party, the PSDB, had also lost cohesiveness. “It has to be better organised, forge closer ties with society, and more vigorously defend its beliefs,” he said in an interview with a local television network, commenting on the party’s poor performance in the elections.

His criticism was basically aimed at Alckmin, who failed to decisively defend the privatisation and “fiscal responsibility” that marked Cardoso’s two terms of government (1995-2003).