ELECTIONS-BRAZIL: Cardoso Reelected in First Round

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 5 1998 (IPS) - The god of time is the great ally of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, reelected president of Brazil in Sunday’s voting. But unlike his “honeymoon” four years ago, the start of his second term is overshadowed by gloomy economic circumstances.

Cardoso, president since 1995, garnered 56 percent of the votes, according to the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics (IBOPE). Former metal worker Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva, running at the head of a leftist coalition, took 29 percent, and Ciro Gomes, who ran as a moderate opposition alternative, won 11 percent.

The vote tallying has confirmed the results indicated by the exit polls, and that there will be no need for a second round of voting.

A perfect synchronisation of events and personal efforts boosted the political career of Cardoso, an internationally reknowned sociologist, who broke with Brazil’s century-long ban on reelection of executive branch authorities.

In 1994, the economic stabilisation “Plan Real”, of which Cardoso was the architect as finance minister, make him unbeatable. The runaway inflation afflicting Brazilians for more than two decades plunged in July of that year, three months before the elections.

The opposition accused Cardoso of applying the Plan Real with electoral more than economic aims. But millions of poor Brazilians who benefited from the stability of prices helped him attain a landslide victory at the time over the same rival he smashed once again on Sunday, Lula.

Fortune seemed to have abandoned him this year. The financial crisis that broke out in Asia reached Brazil, triggering the flight of 30 billion dollars in the two month run-up to the elections, and forcing the government to adopt unpopular measures, such as a drastic hike in interest rates.

But it soon became clear that circumstances were once again running in his favour. Cardoso’s approval ratings rose in the polls. The crisis accentuated the conservative tendencies of voters, who were reluctant to accept change in the eye of the storm.

The financial turbulence would have perhaps affected his bid for reelection if it had reached Brazil earlier, giving the population time to feel the concrete effects expected from the crisis, such as a recession, rising unemployment and major cutbacks to public spending, which will have a direct impact on the poor.

Whatever the case, Cardoso will begin his new term, which starts on Jan. 1, 1999, with harsh measures and, in all likelihood, a drop in popularity.

“Now he will have to untie the knot into which he stuck the country,” a left-leaning voter consoled herself after suffering Lula’s third consecutive defeat.

Cardoso took advantage of the opportunities he helped create that allowed him to become the first Brazilian president reelected to a second consecutive term.

Born as the son of an army general in Rio de Janeiro in 1931, Cardoso studied sociology when that social science was in vogue. After he graduated, he taught at the University of Sao Paulo ((SP), Brazil’s leading university.

The 1964 military coup led him to leave Brazil. In Chile he worked at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLA) at the height of that UN agency’s influence.

Dependency Theory, which he co-authored with Chile’s Enzo Falleto, catapulted him to international prominence.

After several years working as a professor in a university in France, Cardoso returned to Brazil. But the dictatorship blocked him from returning to his post in the USP, forcing him into early retirement. He founded a think-tank, the initial step for his entry into politics.

In 1978 he ran for the Senate representing the state of Sao Paulo, after joining the Brazilian Democratic Movement, the only opposition party allowed by the military regime. At that time he had the support of Lula, who was emerging as the country’s top union leader.

Elected as a substitute, Cardoso reached the Senate in 1983, when Senator Franco Montoro was elected governor of the state of Sao Paulo. In 1984 he made an unsuccessful bid to become mayor of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city.

The errors of that campaign served him as a lesson. He lost precious votes by admitting that he was an atheist, and by demonstrating arrogance, allowing himself to be photographed in the mayor’s chair on the eve of the elections, overly confident due to his lead in the polls.

Reelected senator in 1986, he was a key participant in the 1987- 88 Constituent Assembly. In 1988 he presided over the foundation of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, which proposed a parliamentary system of government, rejected in a 1993 plebiscite.

In 1992 he was named foreign minister, a post on which his sights had been set and for which he was considered the ideal candidate, due to his international prestige, fluency in several languages, intellectual stature and friendships all over the world.

But the decisive turn in his career occurred in May 1993, when then-president Itamar Franco named him finance minister, a post generally reserved for economists.

Cardoso brought together a group of brilliant economists who developed theories to combat the “inertial inflation” fed by the generalised indexing of prices.

The Plan Real, put into effect in February 1994, and which culminated with the launching of a new currency – the Real – in July, enjoyed virtually instant success, and buoyed Cardoso along to the presidency, almost automatically.

But the new four year term that has fallen into his hands has more thorns than flowers. Facing the challenge of pulling the country out of the current crisis, he will not readily repeat that “governing Brazil is easy,” as he boasted two years ago.