Brazil made the headlines in the international press over the last couple of weeks. The nationalization of Bolivia’s oil and gas reserves and president Evo Morales’s statements regarding the presence of Brazil’s oil giant Petrobráas in his country triggered all sorts of attacks against diplomatic relations involving Brazil, Bolivia, and the remaining countries of Latin America. Yet this news waned after the first reports on São Paulo’s organized crime actions, under control of criminal gang First Capital Command (PCC).

Hot autumn in Brazil
Toucans cornered
Conservative wave
Latin-American integration
Lula may win in the first round
Popular support
PSDB and PFL at odds
Still the PMDB
Another developmentalist in the Ministry of the Economy
Agricultural package
“A tupiniquim McCarthy”

Hot autumn in Brazil

Brazil made the headlines in the international press over the last couple of weeks. The nationalization of Bolivia’s oil and gas reserves and president Evo Morales’s statements regarding the presence of Brazil’s oil giant Petrobráas in his country triggered all sorts of attacks against diplomatic relations involving Brazil, Bolivia, and the remaining countries of Latin America, particularly those that compose the Mercosur. Conservative analysts even came to decree the end of South-American integration. Yet this news waned after the first reports on São Paulo’s organized crime actions, the country’s wealthiest state, under control of criminal gang First Capital Command (PCC). The outcome of the PCC strikes and the subsequent police reaction were the deaths of more than 160 people, including police officers, security agents, and civilians (innocent and alleged criminals). Partial figures evoke images of a real war.

The outbreak of attacks had start on May 12 in retaliation for the transfer of 765 inmates linked to the PCC to Presidente Venceslau Penitentiary 2, west of the city of São Paulo. Since then, we have witnessed a series of attacks against the police, uprisings in more than 80 prison facilities state wide, and tens of buses torched down. The state’s capital experienced moments of panic, and the population withdrew to their homes fearful of the wave of violence that set in.

Governor Cláudio Lembo, of the conservative Liberal Front Party (PFL), in a statement to the press, said he had known about the attacks days before the events took place. Lembo took over in March this year, replacing the incumbent governor, Geraldo Alckmin of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), who stepped down to run in this year’s presidential elections.

Based on this information, the Workers Party representation at the São Paulo State Legislative Assembly filed a petition with the State’s Attorney Office, requesting an investigation into a possible agreement between state officials and organized crime. The Association of Military Police Corporals and Soldiers of the State of São Paulo also filed a petition with the Attorney-General’s Office bringing charges against the state’s public safety secretary, Saulo de Castro Abreu, and against then prison affairs secretary, Nagashi Furukawa. The Association questions the secretaries’ delay to warn the police of the possibility of there occurring criminal actions and rebellions in the state in the month of May. Nagashi Furukawa resigned his post two weeks after the PCC attacks.

Presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva offered federal aid to Governor Cláudio Lembo which, in addition to the Federal Police, included the deployment of the 4,000 strong National Public Safety Force and the Armed Forces against the criminal group PCC. The paulista governor, however, refused the support.

In a live interview to Rede Globo’s National News, when asked by journalist William Bonner “Governor, we are going to ask you a question that every Brazilian, or at least most Brazilians, has probably asked himself these past days: For what reason do you think it could have been worse for the population to get federal help?” , governor Lembo, as pointed out by psychoanalyst Maria Rita Kehl, “reminded us of the authoritarian rhetoric of the military: nothing to declare besides all is calm, everything is under control”.

In a press release, the federal government stated that “the single effective response -let there be no doubt- will be the one based on full respect for the law, with police intelligence, combined operations, new equipment, adequate budgets, decent salaries, integration with civil society, coordinated action between local police forces and all the corresponding federal organisms. To overwhelm, arrest, and dismantle on an urgent basis”.

To minister of justice Márcio Thomaz Bastos, isolated efforts to combat organized crime are useless. Bastos defends unity and the use of integrated federal and state intelligence services.

The Workers Party (PT) national president, Ricardo Berzoini, believes the situation created by the wave of violent attacks in São Paulo causes extreme concern, but must not be used politically or with electoral purposes. “This is no time for political disputes. What’s important is to control this situation. For this very same reason, we believe that the state government should have accepted the support the federal government is offering”, stated the president, to whom the “present situation is the result of the collapse of the state of São Paulo’s prison policy”.

Yet the state’s attorney advisor on human rights, Carlos Eduardo Cardoso, was less diplomatic. During a public hearing held at the state’s legislative assembly, he said that whatever the approach used to analyze the problem of violence there was no alternative “but to conclude that this is all the result of omission, negligence, and incompetence on the part of the state’s public safety authorities”. He noted that “five years ago, São Paulo was taken by surprise by the outbreak of a major rebellion in 29 prison facilities throughout the state, the largest rebellion in Brazil to that date. Today’s rebellion is much larger than that one and the largest in the western world”.

The human rights advisor, according to news agency Carta Maior, called for the resignation of “the police commanders and top safety officials” of the posts occupied. “A number of times these same administrators made public statements that the PCC had been defeated, the State apparatus worked night and day on intelligence to achieve that. But that wasn’t true. They lied, they fooled us all. And I am speaking of omission and negligence to rule out the hypothesis of connivance”, Cardoso declared.

The secretary for prison affairs of the state of São Paulo, Nagashi Furukawa, admitted that the PCC had presented certain conditions to put an end to the series of attacks against the state’s security forces and that there had been a meeting between government officials and the group’s leader, Marcos Willians Herba Camacho, a.k.a. Marcola; but denied there had been an agreement between the parties. The suspicion, however, is based on the admission by Military Police Commander-General, Colonel Elizeu Eclair Teixeira Borges, that the government had convened a meeting between Marcola and some of his representatives.

The Workers Party national president criticized the alleged deal struck between the state government and criminal organization PCC to end the rebellions in the state. “This is outrageous”, said Berzoini. “To go that far means virtually opening a precedent for periodical rebellions, with attacks against the society. If there were negotiations, it’s a scandal of enormous proportions.”

The state government’s action raised suspicion not only as to a possible deal, but also due to the tardiness on the part of the Public Safety Department to release the full list of names of the people “identified” and the circumstances involving their deaths. The difficulty in obtaining that information prompted suspicion that the police reaction may have been responsible for several executions reminiscent of the dictatorship’s death squads.

Still during the public hearing at the Legislative Assembly, the president of the National Council on Criminal and Prison Policies, Antonio Claudio Mariz de Oliveira, according to Carta Maior, said he was horrified at the authorities’ refusal to publish the list of casualties. “There is no excuse for the state’s deliberate omission. The families have the right to bury their dead -criminals or not- and the society has the right to know what is happening, to claim responsibilities, if necessary. That decision cannot be at the discretion of one or two people. They have decided not to publish and that’s it?”, asked Mariz. “The state murdered people, whoever they are and whatever the circumstances. And cannot just let the list go unpublished unless and run the risk of committing a crime”, he completed.

On May 25, the government of São Paulo disclosed only part of the information that the public defender’s office had requested on the suspects killed by the police in the aftermath of the attacks coordinated by the PCC. Only 130 necroscopic reports were released by the coroner’s office. In 28 of these cases, the same description: resistance followed by death in confrontation with the police. In 20 cases, the shots were made from top to bottom, which is indicative of an on-the-spot execution.

The trajectory of the shot is one of the factors considered in evaluating whether there was police abuse during the action. A shot from top to bottom may mean that the person was hit after having surrendered, and was either kneeling or lying on the ground. But the conclusion on the abuse still depends on other investigations and documents.

The public defender’s office will analyze all cases. “If there is confirmation of police abuse, we will be able to accept petitions against the state because the state is accountable for the acts of public agents”, says Pedro Gibert, the public defender.

Toucans cornered

Absent and silent during the week that followed the attacks, PSDB gubernatorial candidate José Serra was rescued by newspaper Folha de S. Paulo the following Sunday. In an article entitled “gThe enemy is crime”, the toucan presents a down-toned rhetoric in which he states that “we stand against the criminals who defy us”. To him, that should be the focus. “Criticism against the judiciary, the governments, the police, the attorney’s office, the legislation, social inequality, flaws in the educational system, all that can be more or less pertinent. But it is important to distinguish the essential from the circumstantial. And the essential is identifying the enemy. Even more so if we are to avoid committing injustices by resorting to low-brow sociology”.

Serra also says that “the political or electoral use of this war only strengthens the criminals and contributes to undermine the rule of law”. The toucan candidate, however, does not hesitate to accuse the federal government for the country’s “mediocre” economic growth, which would be responsible for the violence in the cities.

For someone who intends to govern the state of São Paulo and in light of the present situation of public safety in the state’s cities, Serra takes advantage of the space in the media to propose only “an extended minimum sentence for crimes committed against police officers, public attorneys, prison agents, judges, and prosecutors, when on duty, and for any civil servant when caught in association with criminals”.

The tone of José Serra’s speech is one of a person who knows of his responsibility in the security crisis in the state of São Paulo. The PSDB has ruled the state of São Paulo for 12 years and, according to Workers Party representatives in the state’s legislative assembly, from 1998 to 2004, some 1.5 billion reais earmarked for the health sector and 4 billion reais for education went unspent.

The government of São Paulo, under the command of Geraldo Alckmin -the PSDB’s presidential candidate-, has not invested some 615 million reais earmarked for the public safety area over the past five years, during which period the state collected an additional 18 billion reais in taxes, an accomplishment announced as a major fiscal result.

The toucan candidate reduced the annual budget per head spent on the state’s prison system. In 2004, expenditure on managing and investing in prison facilities amounted to 1.145 billion reais for an incarcerated population of 109,163 people -a per head average of 10,944 reais per year. In 2005, this figure dropped to 1.078 billion reais for 120,887 inmates -a per head annual average of 8,917 reais. That is a 15 percent reduction during Geraldo Alckmin’s two complete last years in office.

The budget reduction for state prisons adds to the problems the system is already faced with, especially, overcrowded facilities. Today there are 124,446 inmates for 95,645 vacancies, a deficit of over 28,000 vacancies. Another common problem in the state’s prisons is poor security checks, allowing the entrance of cellular phones with which the prisoners organize rebellions. With more money it would be possible to hire more penitentiary agents and purchase electronic equipment to curb communication in the jail.

Workers Party senator Aloisio Mercadante, a state of São Paulo gubernatorial candidate, points to the fact that the state does not have an efficient intelligence service within the prison system or any prospect of regenerating inmates. “We need a partnership involving municipalities, states, and the Union to combat organized crime”, defends the petista. According to him, the federal government raised by 74% the resources available for the Federal Police, which counts today 11 thousand men. “During the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration’s three last years only 54 people were arrested. Over the three first years of the Lula administration 2,971 people were arrested. Only last year there were 750 arrests and more than 320 tons of drugs seized.”

According to Mercadante, it is both feasible and necessary to invest in vocational training, thus motivating security personnel, and to improve salaries. “We must provide public safety agents with instruments for the purposes of scientific investigation and police intelligence, and results will be more efficient. Today the São Paulo State Civil Police has Brazil’s second worst pay scale. Fingerprinting is still done manually, for the system has not even been digitalized. All that hampers the efficiency and results evidently do not appear”, he says.

“We must have an effective policy to regenerate prisoners and to prevent violence. Above all we must invest in education, culture, and sports for the youth. We have to ensure our youths continue their studies and to widen access to the labor market. What we actually need is to advance these preventive policies against violence”, sustains Mercadante.

The episode of the organized crime attacks in São Paulo will consolidate public safety as one of the themes of the electoral debate.

Conservative wave

For those who had the opportunity of walking the streets of São Paulo during the PCC attacks, comments like “they should throw a bomb in each prison and finish them off”, “at the time of the military regime that wouldn’t happen”, and “the solution is the adoption of the death sentence in Brazil” were current. The population’s feeling of insecurity was only capable of venting repressive measures against “the poor, the dirty, and the evil guys”. As psychoanalyst Maria Rita Kehl said, “since we have no justice, why not content ourselves with vengeance?”

As it is, such declarations only corroborate the thesis that there is a conservative wave permeating the whole of society, whose depth and reach can be glimpsed, for instance, with the result of the referendum on arms trade.

This setting gives room for the most bizarre analyses such as the one made by columnist Barbara Gancia immediately after the attacks. The Folha de São Paulo newspaper journalist wrote that one must bear in mind that, although president Lula says that the problem of public safety begins with education, “inequality is also the result of lack of family planning”.

According to Barbara, a study made in the USA shows that legalized abortion contributed to reduce crime by up to 50%. The thesis is that unwanted children and/or of single mothers are more neglected and suffer greater abuses. Consequently, they are more prone to getting involved with crime. In other words, the columnist supports a sociological caricature whereby one of the causes of crime would lie in poverty. To Barbara Gancia, the poor are potential criminals.

Another far-fetched analysis is the one made by some intellectual sectors who claim to detect dangerous similarities in the speech of organized crime leaders and extremist leftist groups acting in Latin America. According to anthropologist Alba Zaluar, “the political rhetoric of far left groups in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and so on is contaminating these people, who started to act in networks, which are not only interstate and international but trans-state and transnational.”

The reply comes from writer Moacyr Scliar, by stating that “the PCC is not the PC”, the communist party’s initials in Portuguese. According to that author, “the urban terror unleashed by the PCC in Sãao Paulo, points to numerous mistakes: in the penitentiary system, in the public safety policy, with regard to the drug control question, [and] in the relationship between the different levels of public power. And also signals to an old leftist mistake: transgression would be, above all, the result of poverty; more than that, a means to correcting the effects of bad income distribution.”

According to Scliar, “there is no doubt that poverty is a cultural breeding ground for transgression; yet once transgression arises, it becomes an autonomous entity, a business with its own means and ends. Quite different from the revolutionary concept of communist theorists, who spoke of class struggle, but struggle in a broader sense, encompassing strikes and protest movements. Indeed, when it comes to violence communists were, rather than the villains, the victims, and Olga Benário’s history epitomizes that. The PC, Communist Party, was not the PCC”.

Scliar puts things in perspective: “obviously, there are occasions on which the cops play the bad guys, and occasions on which criminals seem the vigilantes, but that is not the rule and nor should it be used as a guideline for a policy designed to combat violence. Which, clearly, calls for two phases: one on an emergency basis, of police repression; the other, a long-term policy to correct the inequalities and social pathology overall. They are not mutually exclusive. Exclusive are the PCC and the PC.”

Antonio Luiz Monteiro Coelho da Costa, author of the text “The seduction of crime”, in Carta Capital magazine, is very fortunate when he states that “despite so many insinuations by conservative journalists who see in the First Capital Command (PCC) a “leftist rhetoric” close to that of South-American guerrilla groups or even as a “communist organization”, the gang is not political at all. Despite defending prisoners with banners such as “freedom, justice, and peace” or “down with oppression”, it never stands up against the regime or capitalism, but only against penal institutions’ wardens and their immediate superiors.

Latin-American integration

The media’s apparent truce with regard to Bolivia’s nationalization of its oil and gas reserves owes more to the dynamics of new facts imposed by reality than to a subsiding of the criticisms by the country’s conservative sectors.

At the beginning of May, the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, announced the nationalization of the exploration of oil and gas and ordered the occupation of the extraction fields controlled by foreign companies in that country, Brazilian state-owned Petrobrás among them. After the decision was announced, army troops took control of the Bolivian oil fields, according to the Bolivian Army General Command.

Besides Petrobrás, many other companies operate in Bolivia: Repsol YPF (Spain and Argentina), British Gas and British Petroleum (United Kingdom), Total (France), Dong Wong (Korea), and Canadian Energy. With the nationalization these companies are obliged to surrender their production to state-owned Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), which will be in charge of selling the production, and defining conditions, volumes, and prices both for the domestic and the external markets.

The Brazilian government released a note acknowledging the decision by the Bolivian government of nationalizing its subsoil resources and controlling its industrialization, transportation, and commercialization. According to the note, the act is “inherent to Bolivia’s sovereignty. Brazil, as mandated by the Constitution, exerts full control of the riches of its own subsoil”.

The Lula administration guaranteed that there will be no suspension in the supply of Bolivian gas, defended the interests of Petrobrás while distinguishing them from the country’s interests, sustained the need for continental integration, prevented the situation from evolving into a conflict whose only beneficiary is the United States and the other conservative forces, and underscored the fact that at the origin of the problem lies an agreement sponsored by the government of former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who did not anticipate any alternatives for a situation like this.

The repercussion in Brazil of Evo Morales’s decision prompted violent attacks against Lula’s foreign policy. At each step taken by the Brazilian diplomacy, the media fed their scoreboards with analyses on who lost and who won in the negotiation. Naturally the Brazilian government always came out worse off in the view of the press and the opposition.

Evo Morales, however, contributed somewhat to stir the feelings of the Brazilian opposition. Perhaps pressed by internal opposition and the need to secure a majority of votes in the elections for the Constituent Assembly, the Bolivian president made several fiery statements against Petrobrás and Brazil, unnecessarily raising the tone of his speech, thus facilitating the work of those seeking to generate animosity between the two countries.

To Ambassador Samuel Pinheiro Guimarães, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a talk at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, according to Carta Maior news agency, repercussion in Brazil concerning the Evo Morales administration’s decision was a case of internal, not external, politics. “There was clearly an effort by the opposition to weaken [Brazil’s] foreign policy, a highlight of the Lula administration. Additionally, there is another effort in course, at an international level, to try to separate Brazil from Venezuela”, he observed.

The ambassador recalled that the gas issue in Bolivia is much older than the Morales administration. The first agreement on the Bolivian gas dates back to 1938. And the agreement for the construction of the Brazil-Bolivia gas pipeline is of 1993. “This relation was not created by the present administration”, he recalled. Actually, he went on to add, the investments made in Bolivia by Petrobrás during the Lula administration were quite small. “There was no deepening of the dependency”, he assured.

Moreover, according to the ambassador, the contract with Bolivia establishes price renegotiations every three months and a reformulation of the price system every five years, and an item sets forth that at any moment either party can propose a price review. Thus, he contended, the Bolivian government was backed in legal terms.

A conflict involving South-American countries at this moment is the US’s, and Brazil’s right for that matter, dream come true, for it would jeopardize the Mercosul and derail the integration efforts made by the progressive governments of South-American countries like Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, and Argentina.

For a long time, the entire continent was dependent upon its economic relation with the United States or the European Union. Yet this is not just about an economic union, but a political one as well. The barrage of criticism is an attempt to halt a process of integration between the leftist and progressive governments of Latin America. Besides the ideological, racist, and xenophobic prejudice.

According to Valter Pomar, the Workers Party International Relations Secretary, the only possible integration for the right is with the United States. “The only thing these people do not consider cumbersome is to bow and lick the boots of those who, today, are rich and powerful. If the leaders of the American colonies in the 18th century and the Chinese revolutionary of the 20th century had had the same posture, the United States and China would not have the power they boast today”, he analyzes.

Lula may win in the first round

President Lula is still leading the race for the October election, reveal polls conducted by institutes CNT/Sensus and Datafolha. The data show that only Lula increased his voting intentions among the main names running for the presidency. Lula’s voting intentions rose from 37.5% in April to 40.5 in May. On the other hand, his main adversary, PSDB candidate and former governor of the state of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin, fell from 20.6% in April to 18.7 in May.

In third appears the ex-governor of Rio de Janeiro, Anthony Garotinho (PMDB), who also fell in the poll, from 15% (in April) to 11.4% (in May). And, in fourth is senator Heloísa Helena (P-Sol), who rose from 4.3% to 6.1% in the same period. Given the current figures, Lula would have more than 50% of valid votes and would win in the first round.

In a hypothetical second round, Lula would have 48.8% of the votes against 31.3% of the toucan candidate. In April the same scenario pointed to 45% and 33.2%, respectively.

The ex-governor of São Paulo and Garotinho also received bad news regarding another important item of the poll: their rejection levels. While Lula’s rate remained practically stable -down from 35.7% to 34.7%-, Alckmin’s rejection rose from 33.5% in April to 40.6% in May, while Garotinho’s went up from 50.7% to 60.7%.

According to Sensus director Ricardo Guedes, with this level of rejection the former governor of São Paulo is nearly out of the electoral race. “Based on empirical verifications of Brazilian elections those with a rejection rate of up to 35% are still in the game. Those with more than 40% are out”, he said.

In the Datafolha survey, the scenario considering Garotinho as the PMDB candidate shows that Lula’s advantage over Alckmin, which was of 20 percentage points in May, rose to 22 percentage points. This percentage is within the margin of error, which is of 2 percentage points. Lula appears with 43% of voting intentions in the poll, against the toucan‘s 21%. Garotinho’s voting intention rate, which was 15% in April, dropped to 7% now.

If the PMDB has no candidate, Lula appears with 45% of voting intentions, against Alckmin’s 22%. If the PMDB candidate is Pedro Simon, Lula has 44% of voting intentions. In this last scenario, Alckmin would have 22% and Simon 2%.

The survey showed that Lula would defeat both Alckmin and Garotinho should there be a run-off election. Against Alckmin, Lula would win by 52% to 35%, a 17-percentage-point advantage. In the scenario against Garotinho, Lula would win by 57% to 24% of voting intentions.

Popular support

Government policies geared to those strata of the population most in need are reflected by the CNT/Sensus survey. Lula is preferred by 46.7% of those voters earning up to 1 minimum wage and by 39.9% of those whose income ranges from 1 to 5 minimum wages. The petista is also the favorite for those in the 5 to 10 minimum wages bracket (31%) and is tied with Alckmin in the next stratum, between 10 and 20 minimum wages (24.4% each). The toucan only defeats Lula among the wealthiest, those earning more than 20 wages (33.3% against 25%).

Lula’s support from the more popular sectors stems from policies that have assured an increase in workers’ earnings, particularly of the minimum wage, a drop in the cost of the basic food basket with regard to price rates in general, the incorporation of more workers into the formal labor market, and compensatory policies like the Family Allowance.

Lula da Silva has the preference of the Brazilian electorate in each of the five regions of the country, even in the Southeast where is main opponents –toucan Geraldo Alckmin (São Paulo) and PMDB’s Anthony Garotinho (Rio de Janeiro)- have their strongholds..

In the first round of the election, Lula would obtain 33.2% in the Southeast, against 23.6% for Alckmin, and 9% for Garotinho. The president’s best performance is still in the Northeast, where he reached 58.6% of voting intentions, while the toucan has only 10%, with the second placing going to Garotinho (13%) in that region.

If the elections were held today, the president would have fewer votes in the South (30.7%), but would still remain ahead of Alckmin (19.3%) and Garotinho (10.1%). In the Northern/Central-Western regions (unified in the poll), rates were, respectively, 36.7%, 20.1% and 16.3%.

Lula would also win, in a first round simulation, in every schooling bracket, including the higher education one, outperforming Alckmin by 28.8% to 26%. In this stratum of the poll, Lula’s best performance is among those who have attended up to the 8th grade, with indices ranging from 41% to 47%.

PSDB and PFL at odds

In an interview to Monica Bergamo, published in newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, the governor of the state of São Paulo, Cláudio Lembo, surprised all by attacking allies, praising adversaries, and identifying in the “cynical” behavior of the “Brazilian white minority” the structural cause for the problem of violence. “Brazil only believes in the national soccer team shirt, a symbol of victory. As a country it only knows defeats. We have a really bad bourgeoisie, a very perverse white minority.”

The chaotic situation of São Paulo’s public security is just another of the imbroglios to be untangled by the PSDB. Lembo also criticized former governor Geraldo Alckmin, who had stated he would have accepted federal help to counter the actions by the PCC if he were still the governor, and ex-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who attacked the negotiation between the state and the criminal gang to end the attacks. His statements stirred all sorts of reactions from PSDB and PFL senators.

The toucans replaced José Serra, considered by many analysts the best candidate from the electoral point of view, with former governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin. Ironically, the same happened with regard to the definition of the vice-president in the toucan‘s slate. The PFL opted for senator José Jorge (PFL-Pernambuco), against Geraldo Alckmin’s favored name, that of senator José Agripino Maia (PFL-Rio Grande do Norte). And if that were not enough, he had his Achilles’ heel exposed: public safety in the state of São Paulo.

Still the PMDB

The ebb and flow within the PMDB camp continues. The novelty now is the likely presidential candidacy of Rio Grande do Sul state senator Pedro Simon. According to information in the press, the ex-governor of Rio de Janeiro, Anthony Garotinho, would be the vice-president in the slate. Former president Itamar Franco, another party candidate, is expected to give up his candidacy in favor of Simon.

The PMDB has found it tremendously difficult to define an electoral composition. In early March, the party was divided along three lines: those who supported the Lula candidacy, those in favor of their own candidacy in the presidential election, and those in support of no candidacy. A party primary gave a majority to former governor of Rio de Janeiro, Anthony Garotinho. But sectors of the PMBD insisted on defending other alternatives. Shortly afterwards, ex-president of Brazil Itamar Franco submitted his name to the party as a presidential candidate.

On May 13, the PMDB held an extraordinary convention to define whether the party should run with its own candidate or not. By 351 votes to 303, the party gave up their candidacy.

The PMDB decision not to run with an own candidate favors the Workers Party scenario, for the dispute is polarized between president Lula and the PSDB candidate, Geraldo Alckmin. With Garotinho out of the race, Lula’s chances of winning in the first round grow. Garotinho occupies today the third place in the opinion polls, which are led by the petista Lula, followed by the toucan.

Those defeated in the May 13 convention say they will keep insisting on having their own candidacy until June 11, when the party’s convention will be held. The required verticalization of alliances, with the presidential coalition defining all other state and local alliances, set forth by the Federal Supreme Court, prompted a majority of PMDB congressmen not to support the party’s own presidential candidate, which would give the party freedom to define regional candidacies with different parties.

Another developmentalist in the Ministry of the Economy

One of the biggest critics of the Central Bank’s monetary policy, economist Júlio Sérgio Gomes de Almeida, a former executive director of the Institute for Studies on Industrial Development (Iedi), is the most recent member of Guido Mantega’s Ministry of the Economy. The appointment places a productive eye at the center of the economic policy, for it is the attribution of the ministry’s Economic Policy Department, whose head Gomes de Almeida will occupy, the theoretical formulation of the guidelines to be followed by the Economy.

With the appointment, the minister clearly signals that his portfolio will be aligned with the productive sector’s demands. The choice for an economist linked to industrial activity to the post marks the “developmentalism”h that Mantega is seeking to instill in his ministry ever since he took over. And it further suggests the kind of strategic political alliances that the government has in mind for the election and a second presidential term for president Lula.

The progressive tinge of the nomination pleased workers and entrepreneurs, the “developmentalists” outside the administration. “The choice may have been made to balance the economic team, which only had monetarists”, said the president of the Single Central of Workers (CUT), João Felício.

The new secretary has at least one short-term problem ahead: contribute to the study of foreign exchange measures in face of the dollar’s low rate.

Agricultural package

The federal government announced an agricultural package designed to benefit family farming. The Ministry for the Agrarian Development announced a pardon on part of the debt contracted by smallholders in the 2005/2006 crop, amounting to 400 million reais. Additionally, the government announced the figures for the National Program in Support of Family Farming (Pronaf) for the 2006/2007 crop: 10 billion reais, an 11 percent increase in comparison with last year.

The government is also going to renegotiate up to 10.6 billion reais in debts owed by rural producers, reduce the interest rates charged in some of its investment lines, adjourn for 180 days entering the names of insolvent farmers in the Union’s active debt records, and raise in 2 billion reais total funds allocated for working capital with money from the Fund for the Support of Workers (FAT), extending maturity on those loans. In addition, the sector’s aid package includes 50 billion reais in credits for the next crop.

With these measures, considering new money, debt payments’ adjournment, and private and public resources, the package will involve some 75 billion reais for agribusiness and family farming.

The farming package also includes the adoption of mechanisms that seek to remedy a pivotal issue of the crisis -a lack of planning by both the government and farmers-, in an attempt to prevent future official bailout loans. The package also contains measures that stimulate producers to save money. “We have to be able to anticipate good and bad times”, defends Guido Mantega.

“We must instill in our farmers the need to save, rather than invest, when more resources flow in”, completes Júlio Sérgio Gomes de Almeida.

“A tupiniquim McCarthy”

“Rede Globo’s decision not to renew its contract with journalist Franklyn Martins at the exact moment that this professional has become the target of an abject smear campaign carried out by the tupiniquim McCarthy, Diogo Mainardi, is quite surprising”. With this statement journalist Alberto Dines, from the Observatório da Imprensa (Press Watch) begins his text “Smear campaign instead of debate about [the role of] the media” focusing on the non renewal of political commentator Franklyn Martins’s contract with that TV network. The tupiniquim, an indigenous group living in parts of Brazil, are used to refer to Brazilians in general.

In April, an article in the Veja magazine cited that Martins had allegedly used his prestige to ensure the appointment of relatives (his brother and wife) to public jobs. On his site, the journalist denied any interference in the nominations and called Diogo Mainardi, the author of the text, a “defamer”.

According to Rede Globo, “the TV station will make no other comments but to add that the non renewal bears no relation with Diogo Mainardi’s column”.

To Dines, “the most powerful Brazilian communications company publicly abdicates the selection criteria of its professionals, delegates them to a competitor company, Abril Publishers, and in an ostensible way acclaims blackmail journalism, christened in 1960 as “yellow press”.

Still according to Dines, the TV network’s note “implies exactly the contrary: Rede Globo tells its distinguished audience that, yes, it is sensitive to the smear campaign system institutionalized by Brazil’s largest circulation weekly magazine”.

“The episode involving Franklin Martins’ dismissal from the TV station cannot end with that official note. It transcends the station and its reasons. The Mainardian method of lynching cannot be made official and converted into a substitute for observation of and debate about the media”, observes Dines.