BRAZIL: Urban Violence Hot Issue in Local Elections

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 25 2008 (IPS) - Crime and violence will be key issues in the October local elections in Brazil's largest cities, especially Rio de Janeiro, although public security is the responsibility of state governments rather than the municipalities.

Violence has become a "hurdle to development" in Brazil, said Fernando Gabeira, a federal lawmaker from the Green Party (PV) who hopes to be one of the two most voted candidates for mayor of Rio de Janeiro on Oct. 5, although opinion polls currently put him in fourth place. If he does come in first or second, he would contest a second ballot on Oct. 26.

At a debate held Tuesday night with social organisations, several mayoral candidates discussed their plans to combat violence in Rio de Janeiro. They proposed "integration" of the Municipal Guard, which lacks police powers, with the state police, and intensifying local activities that contribute to public security.

The mayor's office can cut off organised crime's "sources of financing," such as running illegal public transport, which has spread throughout the city, said Alessandro Molón of the leftwing Workers' Party (PT) – also the party of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but which has never governed Rio de Janeiro.

Barely four percent of electors intend to vote for Molón, according to the latest poll, but he keeps hoping. "Half of the electors are still undecided," he said, an exaggeration of poll results that allows him to claim that no candidate has yet been ruled out.

Rio de Janeiro, a city of six million (11 million people in Greater Rio), second in size only to the southern city of Sao Paulo, with 11 million people (19 million in the entire metropolitan area), has the most heavily contested electoral campaign in the country in terms of the number of candidates.

Only five mayoral candidates, all of them leftwing, took part in the debate on urban violence organised by the non-governmental Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analyses (IBASE) and the Centre for Studies on Public Security and Citizenship (CESeC), in which the questions were put forth by representatives of social organisations.

Frontrunning candidate Eduardo Paes of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) did not attend the debate, at which the main target of criticism were the security policies of fellow PMDB member Sérgio Cabral, the governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, who is promoting Paes' candidacy.

"Fascist and genocidal" were some of the terms used to describe the governor's decision to apply strongarm tactics against organised crime groups which control the "favelas" (shanty towns) that are home to roughly one-quarter of the population of Rio.

Drug traffickers and paramilitary militias, which have multiplied over the last decade, are fighting it out for control of the favelas.

"Where I live," a favela in the west of the city, "there is a de facto curfew, no one is allowed in after midnight," an Afro-Brazilian man who would only identify himself as Fabio told IPS. He was interested in finding out about the plans the mayoral hopefuls had to combat urban violence over the next four years.

The problem in his community is drug trafficking and the frequent gun battles with the police, he said, complaining that "the paramilitary militias (largely made up of off-duty police officers) are gradually taking over."

The solution is "education, education, education," said Fabio, who teaches free community courses that prepare poor youngsters for university entrance examinations. Fabio was himself a beneficiary of these courses in the past.

The Rio de Janeiro state police have the highest rate of fatal victims in the country. Last year, the first of Cabral's administration, 1,330 people were shot dead for "resisting arrest," a 25 percent increase over the figures for 2006, according to official statistics from the Institute of Public Security (ISP).

During the first half of 2008 there was an additional increase of 9.1 percent, with 757 people killed in clashes with the police.

One alarming incident was the death of a three-year-old boy, gunned down in July when sitting inside a car with his mother and nine-month-old brother. Two military police fired at the stopped car at least 16 times, mistaking it for another they had been chasing that was driven by suspected criminals.

The leftwing candidates for the post of mayor of Rio accused the state government of fomenting the killing sprees, which affect mainly the poor, black people who are the majority in the favelas.

Lucia Xavier, of the black women's rights group Criola, also criticised the premise underlying this public security policy, implied by politicians who describe the favelas as "factories of criminals" because of the high average number of children born to women there.

The mayor's office has a Municipal Guard of administrative police, authorised by the constitution only to protect the municipality's properties and services. They are not allowed to carry arms and do not have the ordinary powers of an internal security force.

The candidates who took part in the debate said they were against the proposal to issue firearms to municipal guards.

Municipal guards should not be armed, but instead should work for crime prevention in the community, establishing a presence in public squares and schools and achieving good relations with the population, said Jandira Feghali of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), who hopes to be "the first woman to be elected mayor of Rio de Janeiro," although she is in third place in the polls.

At most, municipal guards might carry "non-lethal weapons," said another candidate. Several were in favour of broadening municipal services for the prevention of violence, by offering precise information about crime and fighting "petty crime," in order to free the civil and military police to concentrate on "major crime."