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CounterPunch
October
10, 2002
Brazilian Elections
2002
Rio's Holiest
View
Faced with the PT's fine
standing after the first round the international press may be
reveling in a cold war pastiche, but deep within the Brazilian
electorate the PT's main rivals are evangelists
by NORMAN MADARASZ
RIO DE JANEIRO. From the air, the 'cidade maravilhosa' was not
so much draped in red as blanketed in white. Millions of paper
backgrounds, pieces of political propaganda, stickers, pamphlets,
slips and posters, shot back light to the spring sun. Some were
still swaying in the bay breeze as they spiraled to the ground
in a last bid to encrust the face of candidates onto the conscience
of voters. Gliding down into the melee, people's faces now in
view, spontaneous socialist marches were breaking out in many
districts. The red flag, symbol of blood and struggle, healthily
breathed the spicy humidity of a victory set in the tropics.
In the aftermath of the first round in
Brazil's 2002 presidential elections, the Workers' party (PT)
is celebrating their best result in a two-decade long history.
Barely a week ago, though, the residents of Rio were reminded
for a few hours of how daunting the challenges are which lie
ahead.
On Monday September 30, the city awoke
to a week bound for history. The national currency hovered dangerously
close to the psychological 4-to-1 mark with respect to the dollar.
Weekend polls had Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, PT presidential
hopeful, stretching tautly over the 50% high-bar, possibly hurdling
to power in the first round. Despite the international support
brought to the country's economy by the IMF's $30 bn loan a month
ago, many questioned the current government's ability to draw
the country intact to January 1 when the new president would
take over. Apart from the desire to govern, the PT rank and file
soberly contemplated what they would be able to achieve under
these highly sensitive financial conditions.
Yet on that Monday the Real would in
fact gain strength. Economists glared confidently with the news
of a record $US 2,349bn third-quarter trade balance surplus,
setting the total for the year at $US 7,727bn. Few had expected
the momentary scenes of panic sparked in the city as narco-gang
lords provoked the shutdown of shops in 40 different districts,
including Copacabana and Ipanema. Classes in 40% of private schools
were hindered, while 22% of public schools had unexplainably
failed to open at all. Buses lacked, creating chaos for workers
and leaving 800,000 commuters without service. At the same time
the civilian police, managed at the municipal level by Mayor
Cesar Maia, had simply seemed to vanish. In the end, businesses
suffered losses estimated at $US 40 million.
Was it a menacing rumor of reprisal that
spread like brushfire? Or had the gangs fully, and finally, taken
over from their favella outposts? For the state government, seated
in Rio's south zone and headed by Ms Benedita da Silva from the
PT, it could only have been a political ploy meant to destabilize
her chances for re-election.
Her insinuations were not a preconceived
partisan attack. This was politics of a broader sort. It was
the kind that lets you speak of the battle waged between the
democratic Republic and drug-traffic gangs as a continuing medium-intensity
civil war. Benedita summoned all of the state's police forces
to the streets. Further threats to destabilize Sunday's elections
led her to seek protection from the federal government, which
promptly dispatched the army to watch over risk areas and ensure
safety for Rio's battered residents.
Such scenes should in no way deter the
celebrations justly being held for Lula, leader of the first
round results with 46.44% of the tally. The country has been
swept over by a red wave, with the PT now the best represented
party in the Lower House of Congress. In the Senate, it has nearly
doubled its representation. Apart from the federal votes, Brazilians
were also asked to select their next state governor and some
state representatives. There was a lot of button pushing in Brazil's
second entirely electronic vote.
Voting is obligatory here, the expression
of republican duty. As a North American attending his first elections
in Brazil, this obligation stirred up conflict with my homebred
individualism. Shouldn't it be up to each and every individual
to decide on whether to vote? Ushered into national pride by
my companions who strode in solemn tranquility in Catete on their
way to voting booths, I've concluded that: No, voting is a binding
matter of civic responsibility. If there is anything a State
owes to its citizens, it is to enshrine voting as their rightfully
unalienable duty to choose who is to govern them.
Our North-American political leadership,
perhaps more so in the US than Canada, is far too content to
be victorious in a climate cleaved of the voting majority. The
Soviet-style two-party system that has taken over the US will
last well into the future. Meanwhile, the population folds in
dejected desperation at the impossibility of seeing progressives
govern at home. As for the Elected, their minimal concern is
legitimacy. Either a Republican or Democrat achieves this easily
from the subservience of the establishment media, notwithstanding
the street smart postures of the latter. Television debates in
Brazil had set the cut-off point to four candidates. Who had
the jurisdiction to bar Ralph Nader from the American presidential
debates? Was this another act of individual and democratic free
will?
Despite the PT's brilliant performance,
on the day after there remained a shrill sense of disappointment
in the streets of Rio. Some Rio residents awoke with the odd
sensation that their aerial view had not been mistakenly skewed
from red into white after all. There was a palpable perception
that the state had voted contrary to the national tendency. The
PT had a disappointing finish here, with the State being only
one of three in which Lula was defeated. But for a bare minimum
of districts in the city itself, Rio had indeed chosen the white
veil.
Where you live in Brazil will undoubtedly
color your perception of the election. Lula took over 50% of
the vote in three states, including very prosperous Minas Gerais
and Santa Cantarina. In Rio, we have been given an ominous sign
of the country's future. Its national rival, the Brazilian Social
Democratic party (PSDB), did not beat the PT here. If there was
a stunned silence in many parts of the South Zone and downtown
on Monday, it was because Rosinha Matheus Garotinho had been
swept to victory in the first round of the gubernatorial race
with 51.3%.
Rosinha, as she is commonly known, is
only one half of a pair. Her husband, Anthony, or simply "Garotinho"
(which means little boy in Portuguese), is the former state governor.
For the longest time, his bid for the presidency failed to leave
a languishing fourth place standing. Early in August, there was
even talk of him dropping out. But in his home state, he ended
up beating Lula by two percentage points. Countrywide, Garotinho
suddenly became a contender, finishing third with roughly 18%
of the tally. This result makes the inevitability of forming
an alliance with him a strategic and costly challenge for either
Lula or his rival, Jose Serra (of the PSDB).
The Garotinhos are far from receiving
respect from Rio's middle classes. During the campaign, Anthony's
obvious populism was self-indulgent to the point of being repulsive.
Rosinha prances about pretending that she's the lollypop queen
of the nation's disenfranchised children, when she isn't assuming
proto-fascist imagery in citing herself as an Evita-like figure:
an honest wife loyally supporting her husband through thick and
thin. Recall that behind every Evita scurries a Lady Macbeth,
misguidedly blaming her husband's political opponents for what,
when the record has been set straight, was caused by his own
megalomaniacal mismanagement. More to the point, however, is
that behind the populism, the couple stands for something much
larger and more ambitious. It goes by the name of the Universal
Church of the Reign of God.
Founded by Edir Macedo in 1977, the 'Universal'
has grown expansively. With over 7000 churches in Brazil alone,
it owns a national television station, Record TV, and countless
radio stations. Rio de Janeiro is its Bethlehem, with a megatemple
in suburban Del Castilho, the "Catedral Mundial da Fe",
able to greet up to 10,000 faithful.
As most churches, their role is not merely
to provide comfort to the weak and destitute. Federal University
sociologist, Maria das Dores Campos Machado, has been following
the role of the evangelical movement in the elections. She shared
her observations with Veja Rio magazine: "When the Universal
Church launches a candidate, the ecclesiastical structure gets
heavily involved in the campaign. The Universal Church has invested
massively in assistancialism and advertising for its social work.
They are fully making use of the mass media."
The Garotinhos are Presbyterian evangelists
with no explicit ties to the Universal. In political terms, they
merely represent the Universal's secular wing. Yet they have
made abundant use of its infrastructure as a springboard to power.
Though they each ran under the heading of the PSB, i.e. the Brazilian
Socialist Party, actual use of the word 'socialism', or even
'worker' was muted under that of "Garotinho" and "I/me".
Meanwhile, Lula's main contender, the
"government" candidate Jose Serra, designated as the
official successor to outgoing president Cardoso, managed to
slip into the run-off elections with 23.2%. This figure showed
no significant increase over what the polls had projected when
predicting that Lula would head straight for the Planalto Presidential
Palace in Brasilia. Who cut down Lula's stride in Rio was Garotinho.
Garotinho would be best described as
an unpredictable electoral clown, were it not for what has quickly
been exposed as his unquenchable thirst for power. What he wants
is as perplexing as how he got 18% of the nation's popular vote.
Exceeding 15 million voters, this is an astonishing result for
someone who gave only the most ludicrous promises and displayed
an utter ignorance of economic issues. He spent three years as
governor in Rio de Janeiro State. Until resigning in his bid
to run for the presidentials, he polished over what has since
exploded as empty state coffers and drug-lord control of the
greater metropolitan region. Early in his term, city progressives
were filled with hope for this new, young "socialist".
Gradually disabused, they soon caught the real hue of his socialism.
An alliance with the state-level PT led
him to power. It also allowed him to co-opt its reputation. His
most pompous campaign promise was to boost the minimum wage up
to $R 400 upon taking office. By contrast, the PT has called
for a gradual increase to $R300 over three years provided the
economy grow by 4.5%. His maddest posture was to reject the conditions
of the IMF loan. Given that roughly 95% of the 2003 budget has
already been allocated, no victor will have much breathing space
on social spending in the first year. A vastly undereducated
people, however, may not understand such constraints when the
powerful relentlessly insist to them that nothing is impossible
provided one be willing to try.
His elegant vice-governor and former
federal senator, Benedita da Silva has struggled with a chaotic
situation since assuming power last spring. Her team has been
determined to fight organized crime head on. Running mate and
current public security and citizenship coordinator, Luiz Eduardo
Soares, was subsecretary of public security under Garotinho's
government.
Under threat to him and his family, Soares
fled the country once the governor dropped his support and protection
for him after he began exposing the circle of corruption among
the state police hierarchy. While in exile in the US, he spent
time studying the New York City police force. When he and Benedita
went into action earlier this year, the gang lords began attacking
state buildings. The governor herself came close to being assaulted
one weekend.
As nationals of any country subjected
to intensive political marketing, Brazilians have shown fascination
for the old vertical identification phenomenon. Benedita grew
up in Mangueira, a poor hillside favella community in Rio's north
zone and legendary home to Samba greats Nelson Cavaquinho and
Cartola. In spite of arresting two drug kingpins and partially
smashing their organizations, Ms de Silva has at times been found
guilty of expressing shame on her face. Many of the disenfranchised
seem to prefer turning their awe-stricken gaze to the saintly
image of Rosinha instead.
In the months leading up to the elections,
the international press has emphasized the discomfort that torment
investors and creditors wrought by the thought of having to do
business with the PT. But the picture drawn by Wall Street and
the IMF, as Kenneth Maxwell recently put it in the Financial
Times, is only an extension of the Latin American literary fad
of magical realism by other means. Their demonization of Lula
is typical to northern power brokers who only leave home to find
themselves sequestered behind the secure walls of five-star hotels
and yachts.
No amount of dialogue seems to be enough
to calm an edgy creditor. Lula and the PT, including much of
the Brazilian media and business class, have painstakingly emphasized
his pro-business alliances, best represented in his choice of
Senator Jose Alencar from the PL as his vice-presidential running
mate. Even more, Lula accepted the terms of the $30bn IMF loan
granted to Brazil amidst its currency crisis in August.
Undeniable to his position, which in
my view is what really disturbs the Anglo-American goldenperson
set, is Lula's passionate nationalism and that of Brazilians
in general. Never for a moment has the Brazilian business class,
regardless of political stripe, accepted the speculation on the
Real as justifiably due to Lula's standing in the polls. The
truth is that whenever the south speaks critical economics, the
north takes it as a rebuff of the self-proclaimed superiority
of their ways.
What is the north offering to the south
now that it grovels amidst growing recession and a string of
corporation corruption cases? The unilateral behavior of the
Bush regime has not only impeded dialogue with the south. It
has cast a shadow on shareholder capitalism, and on the very
nature of the economic growth the north reveled in for the latter
part of the nineties. This is the sentiment the PT has analyzed,
and in regard to which it is delicately proposing action.
Nonetheless, the face-off between Serra
and Lula is diverting attention from those who remain their mutual
opponents. With popular education only slowly progressing during
the Cardoso years, various Church groups have set in their ambitions
for Brazil. One of the two Senators Rio will send to Brasilia
is bispo (i.e. bishop) Marcelo Crivella, nephew of the founder
of the 'Universal'. His switch from a church pop pastor symbol,
with millions of CDs sold, to the pastoral model of political
leader has been striking, to say the least. And as the Church
prepares to run a candidate for the federal elections in the
future, one can already sense the possible tendency for its,
and Garotinho's, drive for alliances.
If Garotinho can be taken at his word
for any type of commitment, which is doubtful, he vehemently
rejects any alliance with the PFL. One of Brazil's most powerful
parties, the PFL represents the interests of the notorious northeastern
oligarchs and is well represented in the Lower House and Senate.
The PT has had to temper the sparks it may launch toward the
PFL if it at all hopes to govern. That's owing to how much more
the executive branch is constrained by congress than it is in
the US. In trying to expose the compromises between these two
parties, Garotinho has donned an image of purity, claiming to
be free of all alliances -- save for the Church's, which is not
alliance in his view, but a creed. With ever stroke meant to
destabilize the PT, one can't help but sense that an unraveled
alliance with the PFL will only increase Garotinho and the Universal's
own opportunities in the Brasilia/Rio tandem.
With the international press' general
reluctance to accept Lula and the PT, it's clear that in the
eyes of many the cold war has never disappeared. Pundits keep
confusing progressive political projects with vapid populism.
In their eyes, if Stalin equals Hitler, then it only stands to
reason that Lenin and Trotsky do as well. That this perspective
is deeply rooted in half-digested knowledge of second-hand readings
popularized by the most conservative political commentators is
clearly reflected in the utter ignorance of what is at stake
in Brazil's criticism of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas
as it now stands.
On November 1, at the ministerial meeting
to be held in Quito, Ecuador, the US and Brazil will assume the
co-presidency of the FTAA until January 2005. In his charismatic
trade-union style, Lula has shone when describing how hard the
Brazilians will negotiate against protectionism, especially on
steel, orange juice and other produce including soy beans.
If there is one thing North-Americans
must understand at this point, it's that the PT's proposals for
the FTAA is a fuller expression of free-trade market principles
than is the Bush administration's. If North-Americans refuse
to share their wealth, that's one thing. But they should not
deny their greed by distorting reality and disinforming its own
public. It should not be a mystery to anyone that the current
lines for instituting the FTAA are largely favorable to the North.
Brazilians are not about to vanquish their country faced with
the corruption and protectionism of the American business and
political elite.
Economic indicators are suggesting that
nothing will be easy for the next president, whether he be Lula
or Serra. Thus far, though, little has been measured of the consequences
behind the thrust of evangelical representation in state and
federal government. A split has surely occurred in the middle
classes in which the PT has been revving its power. In fact,
the PT may not be far from being marred by its direct consequences,
as the main party with which it has run, the PL, is also filled
with the most 'bishops' of the Universal Church.
The messianic message pronounced away
from the eyes of the mainstream media has been heard by the nation's
disenfranchised. Even then, it is hard to speak in terms of class
lines. The Church's ambitions are community forming. Executives
and office workers alike have their roles to play. With nothing
but platitudes involved in Garotinho's political speeches, the
short-comings of what were by far the most open and hotly debated
campaign the country has ever seen, have now bared a blind spot.
Serra's campaign has been the most tainted
by a marketing strategy whose effect was to water down his political
output. But he will have to make some hard choices regarding
policy questions. Serra wants to represent the Cardoso government,
yet aim for a vision that Cardoso either failed to achieve or
did not strive for. Either way Cardoso's support for Serra is
understandably under the press' scrutiny, as Brasilian's have
overwhelmingly asserted -- with 76% of votes -- their desire
to see change from the president's path. With Serra at only 23%,
he'll have to move harder against his mentor if he hopes to accumulate
votes. As Garotinho's antics have now been sidelined at the federal
level, whether Serra has anything as solid to bring to debate
as he has been boasting, is what the next three weeks will most
likely reveal.
The disappointment of Lula's partial
victory on Sunday has started to settle into a realization of
the vast support his vision does have for Brazilians - regardless
of Rio de Janeiro State. That Lula has beaten Serra in their
homestate of Sao Paulo, Brazil's industrial and financial capital
has not only dispelled the stereotype of the Paulista's disgust
for those from the northeast, the land of Lula's birth. It has
confirmed the trust of a large sector of Brazilian industry in
Lula.
Now all Lula's got to show is that he's
able to keep it. The honesty game is about to begin. On that
score, Lula's main rivals are clearly the evangelists. And their
conditions for delegating votes are already mounting.
Norman Madarasz
is a Canadian philosopher. He lives in Rio de Janeiro and welcomes
comments at normanmadarasz2@hotmail.com.
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