With the beginning of September, Brazil’s presidential draws near the finish line. On the first of October, Brazilians will go to the polls to elect the president of the republic, a third of the Senate’s seats, all the 513 parliamentarians of the Chamber of Deputies, 27 governors and state Legislative Assemblies. Public security, political reform and freedom of expression are the other subjects in A look at Brazil.


Campaign sprints toward finish line
Caution and a long campaign ahead
Public security
Political Reform
Freedom of Expression

Campaign sprints toward finish line

With the beginning of September, Brazil’s presidential draws near the finish line. On the first of October, Brazilians will go to the polls to elect the president of the republic, a third of the Senate’s seats, all the 513 parliamentarians of the Chamber of Deputies, 27 governors and state Legislative Assemblies. In the case of the presidency and state governments, should there be a run-off election, this will take place on the last Sunday of October.

Even after the beginning of the free radio and TV electoral program, on which opposition candidates were betting all their chips to improve their performance in the eyes of the electorate, a poll released by polling firm Datafolha shows that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva still holds the lead, with a good chance of winning in the first round. Voting intentions for the petista rose two percentage points in comparison to the previous poll. Lula rose from 47% to 49% while the runner-up in the contest, the Party of the Brazilian Social Democracy candidate (PSDB), Geraldo Alckmin, ticked up from 24 to 25% of the preferences. As for Heloísa Helena, of the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL), she slipped back 1 percentage point to 11%.

The poll also shows that Lula’s administration enjoys a record approval rating: Lula obtained the highest approval rating for a president ever since Datafolha began to conduct nationwide opinion polls to assess the federal government’s performance, back in 1990. The share of those who regard the petista‘s performance good or excellent, which had already risen by seven percentage points between July and early August, moving up from 38% to 45%, rose once again and is now at 52%. Toucan Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002), Lula’s predecessor, hit his best rating in December 1996, when his administration was about to finish its second year, and was approved by 47%.

President Lula’s leadership may be credited to the support the incumbent government receives from the popular strata, to the expectations a major part of the political and social left nurture with regard to a second Lula term of office and to a repulsion against for a possible return of the PSDB and the Party of the Liberal front (PFL) to the federal government.

Opposition candidacies are finding it difficult to enter in a comparative debate, among other reasons, because in the confrontation the Lula government outbalances the eight years of the FHC administration and the toucans’ twelve years in São Paulo, with Alckmin at the head of the state for the five past years.

They also find it difficult to stand a debate over the next term: Heloísa Helena’s proposals do not seem doable, while Alckmin’s bring back privatizations, cuts in social budgets, the consolidation of the FTAA and repression against the social movements.

The week the electoral TV programs started being aired, the opposition had to put up with news programs highlighting that this year’s first semester collective bargaining agreements had been the best ever signed by workers over the period at least since 1996, when the Cross-Union Department for Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies (Dieese) started researching into wage raises.

According to the Dieese, several factors have contributed to the positive outcome of the negotiations, among them an expansion of the domestic consumer market, boosted by a greater offer of credit, the effects of the government’s social policies and the impact of the recent real raises of the official minimum wage.

When FHC was sworn in, in 1995, the minimum wage was worth R$ 100. After four years, its real value fell to R$ 98.83, as a result of a higher-than-minimum-wage increase of inflation over that four-year period. In the four years of the Lula administration, the nominal growth is at 75%. If we disregard the period’s inflation, the real increase reaches 25.8%, with a significant increase in the purchasing power of the minimum wage, one of the highest in the last 40 years.

Even entrepreneurs admit, despite their complaints about the country’s 2.3% growth rate, that macroeconomic indicators are positive. According to newspaper Folha de São Paulo, “from Mário Amato to Paulo Skaf, this will be the first presidential election in which the chairman of São Paulo’s Industrial Federation (Fiesp) does not have a political profile associated with any of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s adversaries”. In 1989, Amato said that if Lula won there would be massive exodus of entrepreneurs. Fiesp was then chaired by Carlos Eduardo Moreira Ferreira, a PFL federal representative, and Horácio Lafer Piva – the son of Pedro Piva, the substitute for Senator José Serra – Lula’s opponent in 2002.

The opposition’s main candidate, while simultaneously advocating a “capitalism shock”, is forced to declare in his electoral program on TV that he will retain the federal government’s Family Allowance program, which was created by the Lula administration. “By repeating to exhaustion that he will broaden the Family Allowance, Alckmin committed a fatal mistake: gave in to Lula’s platform and agenda”, wrote Unicamp’s professor of political philosophy and a Cebrap researcher, Marcos Nobre, in an article to Folha de São Paulo.

The Family Allowance program guarantees financial aid to more than 11.1 million families and reaches out to 99.9% of the Brazilian municipalities. For their part, families benefited must enroll and make sure their children attend classes at school, comply with the vaccination calendar, do prenatal tests and participate in educational actions on maternal breastfeeding and health diets.

The Lula administration social programs have earned him massive support from the poorest sectors of the population, concentrated in the so-called class E, those earning up to one minimum wage per month. Lula’s support decreases as income grows, despite his leading the polls in almost every income bracket.

These data, according to an analysis by journalist Franklin Martins, “signals to a clear cut political separation between the poor and the middle class, which is absolutely unprecedented in the post-dictatorship Brazil”.

Franklin points out that over the last 25 years “the poor and the remedied marched side by side electorally –the middle class ahead and the poor behind, of course”. This was the period the journalist termed “‘stone in the lake effect’, which once a stone is thrown in the lake, or rather, once the political fact occurs, concentric ripples are produced from the epicenter represented by the trendsetters –namely, the middle class– which, after a while, end by reaching the edge of the lake, that is, the immense poor majority of the population. At the time in the country there prevailed a reasonably homogeneous political-electoral behavior, albeit distinct tinges in pace and rhetoric. It was thus in the campaign struggling for direct elections, in the support to the New Republic, in Collor’s impeachment, in the support for the Real Plan and the FHC administration. It was also like that when Lula won in 2002”.

Franklin argues, however, that this process did not happen during the political crisis that irrupted last year or during the referendum on the disarmament. “In these two episodes, on the contrary, the ripples moving away from the center ran into a dam, situated, broadly speaking, somewhere close to class C. Not only did the ripples not reach the edge of the lake, but, contained, they returned to the center, affecting and confusing traditional trendsetters. In a nutshell, the typical middle class, more present in the prosperous Brazil, crowded to one side; the populace, to the other. Right or wrong, the populace believes they improved their lives with Lula and do not want to get off the bandwagon which, in their opinion, is taking them to less tough days”, he reckons.

To Franklin Martins, “the hardcore of this new political behavior is in the so-called class C (between 2 and 5 minimum wages), who, actually, is not a class, but the confluence of diverse sectors, ranging from the factory working class in the cutting edge sectors of the economy to the traditional middle class [now] impoverished, passing by segments of the population which until recently were below the poverty line and have recently joined the market and the world of citizenship. It’s those people who benefit from the ProUni, from the R$ 1.400 computer bought on credit, from micro credit, etc”.

Caution and a long campaign ahead

At any rate, even in face of this favorable scenario for Lula’s candidacy, one cannot dismiss the possibility of a second round occurring for various motives. One must bear in mind that over the last presidential elections there was no second round only in 1994 and 1998, for on those occasions the media and large corporate groups were openly supporting FHC’s candidacy. Today, the greater part of the media and capital does not support Lula.

A research conducted by Doxa/Iuperj, which measured the space allotted to presidential candidates on the pages of four large Brazilian newspapers and the news contents –rated as Positive, Negative and Neutral– leave no doubt with regard to the side the country’s corporate media has taken.

The case of newspaper O Estado de São Paulo is exemplary. In 10 out of the 12 two-week periods measured since the beginning of 2006, the overall rating of the news stories covering the Lula candidacy is negative. Only in two periods, there is an overall prevalence of positive news. When it comes to Alckmin, the numbers are radically different. In eight of the periods measured, the total of positive news outweighs the negative news. And, only in four, negative news prevails.

In the remaining newspapers researched by the institute – O Globo, Folha de São Paulo and Jornal do Brasil – the figures are more balanced, with O Globo providing a slight space advantage to Alckmin, and Folha de São Paulo with a slight advantage to Lula. Yet the relative balance of these newspapers disappears when it comes to President Lula, and not candidate Lula. In all of them, the volume of negative news about the president completely outweighs the volume of positive news. In O Globo, negative news coverage of the president outweighs the positive in all of the 12 periods measured. In Folha and in the Jornal do Brasil, the negative news coverage prevails in 11 periods.

For there not to be a second round, it is required that 50% plus 1 vote of all valid votes be for Lula. In theory, the opposition might prevent that from happening if it succeeds in attracting the votes –for any of its candidacies– of those voters who declare not having a candidate or having a preference for null or blank votes. In the Datafolha poll of August 23, the percentage of respondents who declared that their vote could still change was of 24%.

The PSDB-PFL opposition’s last bet still remains the TV and radio electoral programs. The PSDB-PFL coalition, which counts with more airing time than the Lula candidacy, must overcome the challenge of making its candidate, Geraldo Alckmin, known by the population, while reducing Lula’s electoral favoritism. It is still seeking to win that segment of the electorate showing greater resistance to voting in Lula (a share of the women, the youth, middle sectors and a share of the South and Southeastern regions’ voters).

Thus the tendency seems to be an escalation of the attacks against Lula, the government and the Workers Party. This has been the public call made by PFL chieftains, like Senator Antonio Carlos Magalhães and Rio de Janeiro’s mayor, César Maia.

It is worth stressing that the majority of gubernatorial candidates linked to the opposition are adopting a more cautions attitude with regard to the presidential election. In many cases, PSDB and PFL gubernatorial candidates prioritize their own elections and bow to the favoritism of the Lula candidacy. An example of that is that Alckmin was excluded from the first statewide electoral programs aired on TV by his colleagues and allies in São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, Pernambuco and Ceará.

President Lula, on the other hand, appeared in most of his allies state programs. In the case of Ceará, the toucan gubernatorial candidate Lúcio Alcântara himself, in an attempt to draw on Lula’s favoritism, spent time on his TV program to talk about his relationship with the president and his partnerships with the “federal government”.

This situation, however, might change should these governors manage to get elected in the first round of vote and the presidential contest goes into a second round. It is strategic that the gubernatorial candidacies aligned with Lula succeed in taking the state races to a second round. To render that feasible, they must be able to attach their candidacies to the presidential contest.

Public security

The right wing opposition, however, still holds the lead today in the contest for governors, senators and federal and state representatives. For this reason, it is likely that it should feel at ease and believe that it has nothing to lose by raising the tone of the national campaign, both with regard to the corruption and the public security issues.

Although his security and penitentiary policies are directly accountable for the appearance of criminal organization First Command of the Capital (PCC), the PSDB-PFL right has tried –thanks to the support of the big corporate media– to split the responsibility with the PT. A strategy which had the symbolic support of Heloísa Helena, who charged both petistas and toucans as being equally responsible for the security crisis in the state of São Paulo in a debate held on the Bandeirantes TV network.

While the toucans strive to exempt themselves from their responsibilities, since they ruled the state of São Paulo for 12 years, the state’s population witnesses another series of PCC attacks break out all around the city.

In an attempt to link the PT to criminal organization PCC, the PSDB-PFL opposition released a recording in which members of the criminal organization allegedly plan attacks against politicians, except for the PT’s. According to the São Paulo state PSDB chairman, such “privilege” would be owing to the involvement of the PT in the defense of human rights. Taking a different line, though with the same purpose, sectors of the press and of right wing parties argue that the PCC actions reminded the modus operandi of those they call “leftist terrorist groups”, among which they cite the Colombian FARC. As is known, in 2005, weekly magazine Veja published a forged story according to which the PT would have received 5 million reais from that organization.

The attempt to blame the PT for the PCC actions, apart from not having any foundation, is denied by the fact that the federal government has been offering and effectively collaborating with the government of the state of São Paulo in the fight against crime, thus undermining the credibility of the toucan attacks. On August 11, the federal government announced a 78-million-real package for the state’s police force.

Still in August, the Public Security Integrated Management Office (GCI) was opened in São Paulo, a body that is to coordinate the actions of the federal and the state’s government agencies by sharing information and optimizing resources.

This measure is considered critical by specialists and by the very same government agencies to combat criminal organizations like the PCC, a measure which, nevertheless, only became a reality three years after the São Paulo administration signed an agreement with the Union and became a party to the Single System of Public Security (Susp). São Paulo, which has been under toucan administrations for 12 years, is the last Brazilian state to adopt, in practice, this joint undertaking.

Political Reform

Still in the month of August, another rather important question was in discussion: the call for a National Constitutional Assembly. The proposal of promoting an in-depth political reform in the country was presented by jurists and well received by President Lula.

The idea – which is not an official proposal presented either by the government or the candidate– defined the agenda for the political debate. Among those forces supporting Lula, there are mixed positions, while among the opposition camp, there is a virtual unanimity against the proposal of calling a Constitutional Assembly.

According to the opposition, calling a Constitutional Assembly would be “unnecessary”, a “diversion” with traces of a “coup”.

The opposition’s reaction shows that the president has touched the wound: although most say that the political reform is necessary and urgent, the present National Congress does not demonstrate an actual will to carry it out, among other reasons, because this could affect the “acquired rights” of the parliamentarians themselves.

Stalled by this obstacle, calling for a Constitutional Assembly, in spite of all the difficulties entailed, would be a feasible alternative to promote the deep political reform the country needs, by addressing themes such as partisan loyalty, ticket vote and the public-only funding of campaigns.

Freedom of Expression

While the corporate media campaigns for and backs the opposition’s candidacy with stories and editorials in defense of Alckmin and attacks against the Lula government, the High Electoral Court bans the circulation of magazine Revista do Brasil produced by 23 of the country’s largest unions and the CUT, Brazil’s largest trade union federation.

The ruling, which revives memories of the country’s dictatorial regime, was motivated by a petition filed by the For a Decent Brazil coalition (PSDB-PFL), against the São Paulo regional chapter of the Single Central of Workers (CUT) on account of the circulation of the first issue of the Revista do Brasil. Justice Carlos Alberto Menezes accepted the petition’s arguments, prohibiting the distribution of the magazine by any means, or else face penalties as provided for by item 3 of article 36 of Law 9.504/97.

The first issue brought on the cover President Lula and featured an article analyzing the reasons why Lula’s popularity is persistently high, in spite of last year’s political crisis. The second issue, which contains a story about Volkswagen, was already being circulated.

The PSDB-PFL petition claimed that the publication of the magazine constituted illicit conduct, because some of the stories it contained aimed at “underscoring an alleged electoral strength of the incumbent president of the republic, by informing that his government did not dismantle social programs and did not privatize social and cultural rights” according to the text released at the Electoral Court’s site.

According to its masterminds, the Revista do Brasil was launched in May with the purpose of delivering to the unions’ approximately 360 thousand affiliated members “information presented from the perspective of the workers”. The unions are appealing against the decision.

On August 9, according to news agency Carta Maior, representatives of tens of unions linked to the CUT, journalists and social movement militants protested against the censorship imposed on the magazine. The vice-chairman of Brazil’s press association (ABI), Audálio Dantas, criticized any kind of censorship and defended the free circulation of ideas, so that every citizen has the right to information. “The opinions of the majority of the publications of the big media, whether offensive to some and laudatory to others, do not suffer censorship, because the Constitution guarantees that there is no such practice. Then why is a magazine like this, precisely a workers’ vehicle, censored?”, he questioned.