POLITICS-BRAZIL: Food Crisis Slows Govt Election Drive

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 11 1998 (IPS) - A food crisis spawned by drought and famine in northeastern Brazil has slowed President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s drive for re-election on October 4.

Hungry citizens have looted supermarkets, food trucks and even schools which store food for pupils in the states of Ceara, Pernambuco and Paraiba, forcing the central government into a belated food aid programme for the region.

Cardoso made two tours of the northeast last week. On the last visit on Friday, to Ipira in the interior of Bahia state, he announced the provision of 400 million dollars to help small farmers ruined by the drought. He also threatened to send in Federal Police to stop further looting, believed in some cases to be led by the Landless Movement (MST), because “organising pillaging is banditry.”

The government’s problems stem from a failure to act when the first raids were reported two weeks ago, and which the Catholic Church hierarchy had justified because the population was starving.

For this has been part of the social doctrine of Christianity since St. Thomas fifteen centuries ago, according to church leaders. “The right to life overrules property rights,” said Bishop Orlando Dotti, a prominent defender of the rural people.

This point of view received support from lawyers and judges and the chairman of the Magistrates Association of Brazil, Luis Fernando Carvalho, said the taking of food by the starving was not a crime. “It is the duty of the law to absolve those who steal because they are hungry,” he said.

The Landless movement, known for invading rural estates and government offices in order to speed up agrarian reform, went into action, leading attacks on supermarkets and blockades on roads to charge “tolls” on the lorries to help the hungry.

Apart from accusing the MST of “banditry” , the government also declared the opposition was trying to take political advantage of the climatic upheavals in Brazil, attributed to the El Nino weather phenomenon. Early this year, the MST decided to support Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, presidential candidate for the left-wing Workers Party (PT) and an opposition alliance.

Since April 30, official bodies have distributed one million baskets of food to the families most affected by the drought in 1,236 municipalities in the northeast.

“We will not tolerate the politicisation of the famine,” said Justice Minister Renan Calheiros, announcing a Federal Police offensive against unrest in the northeast.

Political observers agreed the government took too long in reacting to the shortage of food as the drought was forseeable in the wake of El Nino, which had created havoc since last year. The lack of permanent solutions for such tragedies also came in for criticism – as they have been occuring for the last 100 years.

Former president Itamar Franco, who backed Cardoso as his successor in 1994, called on the government to carry out a project to channel the waters of the Sao Francisco river to irrigate a large part of the Northeast.

This is one of the largest Brazilian rivers, crossing the sourthern section of the northeast. With an immense flow, it feeds an important hydroelectric centre and a successful irrigated fruit growing programme, the extension of which is considered a keystone of the economic development of the region.

On top of increasing unemployment, the famine is threatening 10 million people, a quarter of the population of the northeast, contributing to the corrosion of Cardoso’s popularity, only five months from election day.

But the opposition is scarcely in a position to capitalise on the President’s problems, and political analysts still rate his re-election is a near certainty. Lula, the main opposition candidate, is reported to be considering giving up his candidacy, by splitting from the alliance which supports him.

The Rio de Janeiro section of the PT has decided to launch its own candidate for the provincial government. The Democratic Labourist Party, the second strongest left-wing force, had demanded a local alliance supporting its candidate as a condition for them supporting Lula.

Lula made it clear he would not stand for the presidency without a united left behind him, arguing that he was already the defeated candidate in 1989 and 1994, and will only try for the third time if he really stands a chance of winning.