Tag Archives: lula

After vote to impeach Rousseff, what happens next?

The fight over whether to impeach Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff has left the country deeply divided. (Renato S. Cerqueira/Futura Press/Folhapress)
The fight over whether to impeach Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff has left the country deeply divided. (Renato S. Cerqueira/Futura Press/Folhapress)

No one has accused Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, of any personal impropriety in the sweeping investigations of kickbacks to politicians in Brazil from the state oil company, Petrobras.brazil

Nevertheless, a two-thirds majority of the Câmara dos Deputados (Chamber of Deputies) decided to impeach Rousseff anyway, based on an obscure theory — that Rousseff fudged the budget numbers in the lead-up to the 2014 election to hide the  precarious condition of Brazil’s budget deficit and reduce the need to cut spending in an election year.

No one had any doubts in 2014 that the country’s increasing debt burden was weighing down its economic outlook and even Rousseff, after her reelection, shook up her cabinet, bringing in Joaquim Levy as finance minister, and Nelson Barbosa, now Levy’s successor, to introduce greater budget discipline as the country sinks further into recession.

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RELATED: Collor faced Brazilian impeachment crucible
25 years before Dilma

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In reality, it’s the Petrobras scandal that’s swept up Rousseff, along with nearly 320 members of the Brazilian congress. Operation Car Wash has uncovered a wide-ranging scheme whereby leading politicians accepted kickbacks on the basis of inflated public contracts granted from Petrobras. The scandal implicates Rousseff’s own Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers Party), but it has also snared politicians from across the ideological spectrum. The scandal took an even sharper turn this spring when former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Rousseff’s mentor who first won power in 2002, was also accused of taking kickbacks. The speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha, among many, many others, are also under investigation. Brazilians refer to the scandal as the petrolão, which translates to the ‘big oily.’

The battle moves to Brazil’s Senate

Complicating the impeachment vote is the fact that Rousseff herself is personally and politically unpopular. A collapsing economy has left her with an approval rating in the teens. In one sense, Rousseff was impeached on Sunday because she’s so widely reviled by Brazilians. Rousseff’s opponents, even though many of them are under investigation themselves, blatantly admit that they supported impeachment just to remove her from office for political reasons. The Brazilian right has lost four consecutive elections to either Lula or to Rousseff, though Rousseff only narrowly won reelection in October 2014.

The nakedly political considerations involved explain why Rousseff and her left-leaning supporters have been quick to label the impeachment vote as an undemocratic coup. But it’s more complicated than either side would like to admit. Rousseff is correct when she argues that the Brazilian media is, largely, anti-PT, and the business elite has increasingly turned against her and Lula.

But Rousseff herself served as the chairwoman of the Petrobras board between 2003 and 2010, and her critics believe it’s risible that she knew nothing about the kickbacks. Moreover, she blatantly attempted to appoint Lula to her cabinet last month as a way of offering him immunity from prosecution. (Rousseff’s supporters subsequently attacked the lead prosecutor, Sérgio Moro, for releasing the audio recording of a conversation between Lula and Rousseff).

Rousseff is now almost certain to face a prolonged trial before the upper house of the Brazilian Congress. With just a majority vote in the 81-member Senado (Senate), she can be suspended for office for 180 days. Her vice president, Michel Temer, the 75-year-old leader of the Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (PMDB, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party), will almost certainly take over temporarily and, if not impeached himself, will take over if Rousseff is formally removed. The next elections are scheduled for 2018.

Temer and the PMDB broke with Rousseff earlier this month, in a step that now seems likely to have doomed Rousseff’s fate. Temer has already indicated that, as Brazil’s new president, he will pursue a much more center-right orientation that will look to assure markets and business elites. He has also indicated that he might attempt to rein in the Petrobras investigations that have thoroughly discredited a country’s worth of institutions. The PMDB is a ‘big tent’ party whose sole ideology seems to be proximity to power — it has provided support to every sitting Brazilian government, of the center-right or the center-left, since 1994. Temer, Cunha and other leading pemedebistas are under the same clouds of corruption as many of the leading petistas, so a Temer presidency would not wipe the political slate clean. 

Rousseff will, however, survive if she can muster more than one-third of Brazil’s senators in a trial that might not begin until May.

Her removal isn’t a fait accompli.

Note, however, that Rousseff (and Temer, as her 2014 running mate) still faces the possibility that her reelection will be vacated by Brazil’s supreme electoral court, which is reviewing whether the Rousseff campaign received illegal campaign funds. If the court decides to vacate the election, Cunha (the scandal-plagued speaker of the Chamber of Deputies) will temporarily replace Temer as president before a fresh presidential vote later this year.

Brazil’s hyper-partisan future looks grim

The legacies of Lula and Dilma are now bound together through the high-stake impeachment process. (Facebook)
The legacies of Lula and Dilma are now bound together through the high-stake impeachment process. (Facebook)

Even if Rousseff survives the Senate trial, she will have virtually no power as a wildly unpopular lame-duck president — just the second in modern Brazilian democracy to be impeached. Rousseff will continue fighting to protect the legacy of lulismo and the PT’s four terms in power, most notably the massive programs that have reduced extreme poverty and inequality that have made Lula, Rousseff and the PT extremely popular among Brazil’s poor. Moreover, even as Lula himself faces criminal liability for his own possible role in the Petrobras scandal, he remains extremely popular in Brazil (much more so than Rousseff) and on the Latin American left, generally.

Indeed, if an election were held today, Lula would be competitive to win, as incredible as it seems. He’s essentially tied with the other top-tier contenders from the 2014 election, Marina Silva (an alternative leftist with socially conservative positions on abortion of LGBT rights and with roots in Brazil’s green movement) and Aécio Neves, a Brazilian senator and the former two-term governor of the state of Minas Gerais. Neves today is the leader of Brazil’s main center-right opposition party, the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB, Brazilian Social Democracy Party), which has long supported Rousseff’s removal.

But the impeachment process and its aftermath are already making Brazil’s hyperpartisan divide even worse. A small glimpse of the ugliness came on the floor of the Chamber of Deputies Sunday night when one member, Jair Bolsonaro, who also hopes to run for president in 2018, dedicated his vote in favor of impeachment to the leader of a torture unit during Brazil’s military dictatorship whose victims included, among others, Rousseff herself. Other far-right deputies also voiced praise Sunday night for some of the leaders of Brazil’s military dictatorship from 1964 through 1985.

Though a majority of Brazilians (including both wealthy and poor Brazilians) supported Rousseff’s impeachment, the battle has left many voters divided sharply. Moreover, a compromised Temer-led interim presidency also seems unlikely to unite a country that still faces incredible challenges, including a nasty economic downturn, the rising threat of the Zika virus and the difficulty of hosting the first Summer Olympics in South American history later in 2016.

Brazil’s democracy has already survived one impeachment, when former president Fernando Collor resigned a day before the Brazilian senate voted formally to remove him from office in December 1992. But Collor, at the time, was more personally and, potentially, criminally implicated in the corruption scandal that spurred his impeachment, which the Chamber of Deputies passed in a near-unanimous vote. In contrast, the impeachment battle against Rousseff has been far more colored by partisan opinion.

Collor faced Brazilian impeachment crucible 25 years before Dilma

Fernando Collor de Mello left office in January 2013 after his removal as president by the Brazilian Senate (O Globo / Roberto Stuckert Filho)
Fernando Collor de Mello left office in January 2013 after his removal as president by the Brazilian Senate (O Globo / Roberto Stuckert Filho)

As Brazil’s congress votes on president Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment today, it’s not the first time that the Câmara dos Deputados (Chamber of Deputies) will consider a president’s impeachment.brazil

It’s not even the first impeachment since the return of civilian, democratic rule in the 1980s.

Before Rousseff, there was Fernando Collor de Mello, who was impeached nearly a quarter-century ago, and who resigned a day before a formal vote to remove him from office.

Commentators ruefully said during Collor’s impeachment crisis that the process showed Brazil’s institutions, from its media to its judiciary, were robust enough to stop impunity in a newly democratic Brazil, even when corruption went all the way to the presidential palace.

But as Operation Car Wash wreaks havoc on the entire spectrum of Brazilian politics, and commentators are saying the same thing today, the corruption within the Collor administration now seems quaint compared to the current scandal, which involves massive kickbacks from Petróleo Brasileiro SA, the state oil company, to hundreds of politicians within many Brazilian parties.

If anything, the lessons of the Collor impeachment viewed in the context of the current Petrobras scandal — informally nicknamed , ‘petrolão’ (the ‘big oily’) — show just how tenacious the roots of corruption are in Brazil, as much today as 20 or 30 years ago. Continue reading Collor faced Brazilian impeachment crucible 25 years before Dilma

Brazil might not be better off in a post-Dilma world

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Michel Temer, Brazil’s vice president, comes from an ideology-free party devoted primarily to remaining in power. (Facebook)

It’s looking increasingly likely that Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff might not make it through the end of her term in January 2019.brazil

On March 12, Rousseff’s main coalition partner, the Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (PMDB, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party) announced that it would take a full month to reconsider its support for Rousseff, currently in her second term and what amounts to the fourth consecutive term of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers Party) that began with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s 2002 election victory.

Since mid-March, the drive to impeach Rousseff has only intensified, with prosecutors seeking to interview and possibly detain Lula da Silva himself, the godfather of not just the Brazilian left but the entire Latin American left. Rousseff attempted to appoint Lula da Silva as her chief of staff to give him the kind of ministerial role that he would need to evade potential investigation, though Brazil’s supreme court blocking the appointment in short order. Though Rousseff herself has not been personally implicated in the Petrobras scandal (whereby officials gave kickbacks to politicians in exchange for inflated construction contracts), investigators believe that Lula da Silva might be more deeply involved.

Lula da Silva, incredibly, might be arrested at any moment, which would almost certainly accelerate the push to impeach Rousseff on obscure charges about obfuscation of Brazil’s state finances during the 2014 election campaign. Also, incredibly, impeachment isn’t the only way that Rousseff might be forced from office. If it emerges that she won the 2014 presidential election through illicit money, she and the vice president could be removed through the cassação process that could vacated the election altogether.

Either way, the presidency would end up in either the hands of the PMDB: in the case of impeachment, vice president Michel Temer or, in the case that the 2014 election is annulled, the speaker of the Brazilian congress’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies (Câmara dos Deputados), Eduardo Cunha.

Neither result would give Brazilians much comfort about the state of their country’s government.
Continue reading Brazil might not be better off in a post-Dilma world

Four things Dilma must do to win the Brazilian presidency

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Plagued by corruption scandals, a sinking Brazilian economy, protests from young voters who scorn politics as usual and howls from an investor class that has lost faith in her ability to govern effectively, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff could become the first president to lose reelection since the return of democracy to Brazil in 1985.brazil

In the first round of the Brazilian elections on October 5, she led the presidential vote against her center-right rival Aécio Neves by a margin of 41.59% to 33.55%, and she effectively vanquished former environmental minister Marina Silva, who emerged in late August as the chief threat to Rousseff’s reelection.

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RELATED: Five things Neves must do to win the Brazilian presidency

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Rousseff now faces a united opposition front — Silva earlier this week endorsed Neves, the candidate of the opposition Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB, Brazilian Social Democracy Party). Notably, Rousseff’s governing Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers Party) lost 18 seats in the lower house of the Brazilian national congress.

Accordingly, Rousseff faces a tough fight against Neves, the popular former Minas Gerais governor, and polls show that she very narrowly trails Neves in the October 26 runoff.

As in any election, however, an incumbent like Rousseff has a strong case. Here are the four things she must do to maximize her bid for reelection and a fourth term for the PT. Continue reading Four things Dilma must do to win the Brazilian presidency

Five things Neves must do to win the Brazilian presidency

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Fresh off a surprising victory in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election, Aécio Neves suddenly seems like a man with a real chance at leading the first center-right administration in 12 years. brazil

As Brazilian voters focus on the campaign for the October 26 runoff, the second post-election Datafolha poll gives Neves, the former governor of Minas Gerais and the candidate of the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB, Brazilian Social Democracy Party), a slight lead of 45% to 43%.

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RELATED: Four things Dilma must do to win the Brazilian presidency

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It’s not the first time, however, that a poll has showed a challenger leading incumbent Dilma Rousseff, who is hoping to win a fourth consecutive term for her governing, center-left Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers Party). For much of the month and a half preceding the October 5 vote, Rousseff trailed Marina Silva, who unexpectedly finished in third place after vaunting to the top of polls, when she suddenly replaced Eduardo Campos, who died in an August 13 airplane crash. As the presidential candidate of the Partido Socialista Brasileiro (PSB, Brazilian Socialist Party), Silva hoped to thread a third way between the traditional left and right.

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RELATED: Five reasons why one-time frontrunner Silva tanked

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But a steady stream of negative advertising successfully beat back the Silva challenge, and Rousseff is now counting on the same machine to defeat Neves. Unlike in the first round, however, Neves will enjoy equal access to television airtime, so he’ll be on much more solid footing against Rousseff than Silva was.

Fresh off their first debate, however, Neves is still very much in the game. Here are the five things he needs to do between now and October 26 to become Brazil’s next president.

Continue reading Five things Neves must do to win the Brazilian presidency

Will Marina Silva be squeezed out of the Brazilian runoff?

nevesdilmaPhoto credit to Miguel Schincariol, AFP/File.

On the Friday before Brazil’s first-round general election, the biggest story is that the runoff that everyone expected — a showdown between incumbent president Dilma Rousseff and former environmental minister and presidential candidate Marina Silva — may not actually happen.brazil

It’s a stunning turn of events. Silva, the candidate of the Partido Socialista Brasileiro (PSB, Brazilian Socialist Party), is still the favorite to advance to a runoff against Rousseff, the candidate of the governing Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers Party), which has led Brazil since the 2002 election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

But it’s going to be a lot closer than anyone thought for the past six weeks, while Silva benefited from the sympathy of being the candidate to replace her late running mate, former Pernambuco governor Eduardo Campos, who died in a plane crash on August 13.

Can anyone guarantee, 48 hours out from election day, what will happen?

In a word, no.

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RELATED: In Depth — Brazil

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The latest Datafolha poll, taken between October 1 and 2, shows Rousseff, the candidate of the governing  with 40% of the vote to just 24% for Silva, and 21% for Aécio Neves (pictured above with Rouseff). When all undecided voters are allocated or eliminated, Rousseff wins 47% of the vote — just short of a stunning outright victory on Sunday. Rousseff would win a runoff against Silva by a margin of 48% to 41%.

Neves, a senator and the former governor of Minas Gerais, the candidate of the center-right Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB, Brazilian Social Democracy Party), could actually pip Silva to the runoff.

It’s not likely, but it’s a much more possible outcome than anyone believed even earlier this week.  Continue reading Will Marina Silva be squeezed out of the Brazilian runoff?

Neves struggles to puncture the Dilma-Marina show

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A month and a half ago, when Brazil’s investor class proclaimed its doubts about the reelection of president Dilma Rousseff, no one stood to gain more than Aécio Neves.minasgeraisbrazil

The grandson of a distinguished pro-democracy activist, Neves (pictured above) represents the next, post-lulista generation of Brazil’s center-right politics. Three decades younger than Brazil’s last conservative president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and more charismatic than former São Paulo governor and mayor José Serra, Neves brought to the race a strong pedigree and an accomplished record as an economic reformer as the two-term governor of the powerful, sprawling state of Minas Gerais.

That was before the airplane crash that killed former presidential candidate Eduardo Campos, which suddenly catapulted his running mate, the popular Marina Silva, into the presidential race.

Where Neves once had credible hopes of becoming Brazil’s next president, he now seems likelier to play a kingmaker role in what’s shaping up to be a fiercely contested runoff between Rousseff and Dilma.

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RELATED: Why Marina Silva must now step up for the Brazilian left

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Within days, Silva leapt to the lead in polls for the race to become Brazil’s next president. Though Rousseff has now recovered a first-round lead in many polls, Neves is still languishing in third place, far behind both Rousseff and Silva, a reverse from the summer, when Neves held a solid second-place position against the late Campos, who was leading a coalition anchored by the Partido Socialista Brasileiro (PSB, Brazilian Socialist Party) that, until recently, supported the Rousseff government.

Polls show that the October 26 runoff will be incredibly tight between the two women, and many officials within Neves’s party, the center-right Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB, Brazilian Social Democracy Party), popularly known as the tucanos (‘toucans’) was already talking a month ago about how they’ll support Silva, a former environmental minister under Rousseff’s mentor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in the runoff. Armino Fraga, a former central bank president known for stabilizing the Brazilian real in the early 2000s, who returned to the fray to help elect Neves, is now being floated instead as a possible finance minister in a potential Silva administration. Fraga, for now, refuses to serve in any administration other than Neves’s.  Continue reading Neves struggles to puncture the Dilma-Marina show

Brazilian Socialists finalize Silva-Albuquerque ticket

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One week after the tragic airplane crash that ended the life  of Brazilian presidential candidate Eduardo Campos, his party has quickly minted a new ticket for the October general election.brazil

As widely expected, Campos’s running mate Marina Silva agreed to run in Campos’s place as the candidate of the Partido Socialista Brasileiro (PSB, Brazilian Socialist Party), which only last year broke with its longtime alliance with the governing Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers Party), the party of Brazil’s incumbent president Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

For her part, Silva is a former PT legislator and environmental activist, who served as Lula’s environmental minister between 2003 and 2008 before she broke with Lula. She subsequently joined the Partido Verde (PV, Green Party) to run for president four years ago — winning nearly 20% of the vote against Rousseff in the first round of the 2010 election. 

In 2014, difficulties in registering a new party forced Silva to shelve, however reluctantly, her presidential ambitions and she joined the Brazilian Socialists. Campos, the former popular governor of the northeastern state of Pernambuco, named Silva as his running mate.

That all changed last week with the air crash in São Paulo state that killed Campos and brought the Brazilian election campaign to a halt as Rousseff, Silva and the rest of Brazil’s political class paused to mourn Campos.

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RELATED Campos, Brazilian presidential candidate, dies in plane crash
RELATED
: Why Marina Silva must now step up for the Brazilian left

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With 10 days to select a new candidate, and with just weeks to go before the election’s first round on October 5, the PSB chose Silva over the weekend to lead its ticket, on the condition that Silva, who hasn’t always been the most disciplined candidate in the past, and who is a newcomer to the PSB, will continue to honor the party’s electoral program and regional alliances. Technically, like Rousseff and center-right challenger Aécio Neves, Silva will head a coalition of parties in the presidential race. Silva’s coalition, though dominated by the PSB, also includes five smaller parties, such as the    Partido Popular Socialista (PPS, Popular Socialist Party). 

The whirlwind of events brings to the presidential race a candidate who, ironically, garnered much more support than Campos ever had. Continue reading Brazilian Socialists finalize Silva-Albuquerque ticket

Rousseff holds weak lead as reelection challenge looms in Brazil

lularousseff

It’s still Lula’s Brazil. And it’s perhaps easier to think that Brazil’s October election is less a referendum on president Dilma Rousseff’s reelection, and more the challenge of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers Party) to win a fourth term in the presidential palace at Planalto.brazil

If Rousseff, as polls currently predict, wins a second term, the Workers Party will have governed Brazil from 2003 until at least 2019 — nearly half of the period since the fall of Brazil’s last military regime in 1985.

But polls can be also misleading, and they can easily change over the course the next 65 days until Brazilians vote.

Just ask Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, who watched a wide double-digit lead evaporate between March and May, when he narrowly lost the first round of Colombia’s presidential election to the more conservative candidate, former finance minister Óscar Iván Zuluaga. Though Santos ultimately defeated Zuluaga in the runoff two weeks later on June 14, it was an incredible scare for the incumbent — and it could have tanked the Colombian government’s historic peace accords with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

The stakes of Brazil’s general election on October 5 (and runoff, if necessary, on October 26, in the presidential and gubernatorial elections) are no less vital. In addition to the presidency, Brazilian voters will elect all 513 members of the Câmara dos Deputados (Chamber of Deputies), 54 of the 81 Brazilian senators, and the governors of all 26 states and the Distrito Federal.

Brazil remains the largest economy in Latin America, with promising offshore oil exploration, a rising middle class and a dynamic political marketplace. Just two decades ago, the country was rising out of military dictatorship, marked inequality, hyperinflation and economic misery. Rio de Janeiro, the country’s second-most populous city, is set to host the Summer Olympics in 2016, the first South American city to do so.

Nevertheless, Rousseff’s lead is every bit as precarious as Santos’s was in Colombia. In the October 2010 election, Rousseff was forced into a runoff by her more conservative rival José Serra, a former senator and former São Paulo mayor and governor. Though Rousseff ultimately defeated Serra in the second round by a margin of 56.05% to 43.95%, many Brazilians were surprised that Rousseff didn’t win the first-round election outright, as her predecessor, Lula  (pictured above with Rousseff), did in 2006.

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This time around, she’ll face Aécio Neves (pictured above), the candidate of Serra’s center-right Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB, Brazilian Social Democracy Party). Continue reading Rousseff holds weak lead as reelection challenge looms in Brazil

14 in 2014: Brazil general election

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13. Brazil general election, October 5 (presidential runoff on October 26).brazil

Though Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff holds a wide polling edge that favors reelection, her broad support is not necessarily deep, as demonstrated by the massive anti-government protests in 2013 that resulted from increased public transportation fees and eventually targeted Brazil’s stagnant economy, poor job opportunities and political corruption.  An economy that was not long ago soaring grew by just 0.9% in 2012 and is expected to grow by a hardly stellar 2.5% in 2013.  What’s more, Rousseff (pictured above) still has to get through most of 2014 — and there’s plenty of time for the opposition to upend her lead.  She’s running for what would be the fourth consecutive presidential term for the social democratic Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers Party), itself testament to the enduring popularity of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Her prospects became more difficult in October 2013, when former presidential candidate Marina Silva decided to join forces with the candidate of the Partido Socialista Brasileiro (PSB, Brazilian Socialist Party), Eduardo Campos, the two-term governor of Pernambuco state in northeastern Brazil.  Though it unofficially supported Lula da Silva’s reelection in 2006 and formally supported Rousseff in 2010, the PSB left Rousseff’s government in September 2013.

Though Campos is (for now) the presidential candidate, his running mate is by far a much more popular figure nationally.  One of Brazil’s most prominent politicians of African descent, Silva served as Lula da Silva’s environment minister between 2003 and 2008, where she earned a reputation as a staunch defender of Brazil’s fragile rain forests and often found herself at odds with the more business-friendly instincts of others within her own government.  Running as the candidate of Brazil’s Partido Verde (PV, Green Party), she won 19% of the vote in the first round of the October 2010 presidential election, and she was trying to found a new ‘sustainability party’ in 2013 before obstacles made that path impossible.  Campos, who likewise served in Lula da Silva’s administration as minister for science and technology between 2004 and 2008, became Pernambuco’s governor in 2007 and was reelection with 82% of the vote in 2010.

The combination makes for an amazingly balanced ticket.  Campos’s geographic base is Brazil’s northeast, while Silva has more support in the south and southeast.  Campos is popular among business interests and could credibly appeal to conservatives who chafe under the increasingly regulatory intervention of Rousseff’s administration, while Silva is popular among younger Brazilians who are disenchanted with politics as usual.  They’re both opposition candidates who nonetheless have ties to Lula da Silva, bringing some continuity with Brazilian policy over the past decade.  Together they could build a credible anti-Rousseff coalition from among voters to her left and to her right, especially in a runoff.

Brazil’s center-right Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB, Brazilian Social Democracy Party) will likely be represented by Aécio Neves, who served as governor of Minas Gerais, the second-most populous state in Brazil and home to Belo Horizonte, from 2003 to 2010.  As governor, Neves cut the state’s budget and promoted investment, transforming the state’s fiscal outlook in a way that attracted national and international regard.  In 2010, he was elected to the Senado Federal (Federal Senate), the upper house of Brazil’s Congresso Nacional (National Congress), and in 2013, he became the leader of the PSDB, making him the favorite to become its 2014 presidential contender as well.

With so much time until the election, the presumed candidates aren’t fully settled — and parties don’t have to make decisions until 2014.  Silva and Campos could change places on the ticket, for example.  Conceivably, Rousseff could step aside for former president Lula da Silva, though he announced early in 2013 that he wasn’t running and that he was supporting Rousseff for reelection.  If Neves falters on the campaign trail, José Serra, the former São Paulo mayor, São Paulo state governor, planning minister and health minister could replace him on the ticket.  But at age 71, Serra is seen as yesterday’s man — he lost the 2002 presidential race to Lula da Silva by a wide margin and lost a second bid in the October 2010 race to Rousseff by a margin of around 56% to 44%.  What’s more, he lost a comeback bid to return as mayor of São Paulo in October 2012 by a similarly wide margin.

Brazil will also elect one-third of its Senate (27 out of 81 seats) and all 513 members of the Câmara dos Deputados (Chamber of Deputies), the lower house of the National Congress.  Despite over a dozen major parties with at least 10 deputies, the parties align into a ‘lulista’ bloc and a center-right bloc, which gives Rousseff a majority in both houses, including 50 senators and 325 deputies.  Other parties who support Rousseff’s government, however, are still undecided as between Rousseff and Campos, including the second-largest party in the National Congress, the big tent Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (PMDB, Brazilian Democratic Movement Party), and the center-right Partido Progressista (PP, Progressive Party).

Next: US Midterms

Meet José Mujica, the Uruguayan president who’s on the path to legalizing marijuana

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Although Uruguay’s austere president José Mujica grows chrysanthemums with his wife in his humble home outside Montevideo in his spare time, that’s not the kind of flower power that’s catapulted him to global headlines this week.uruguay

Instead, he’s moved forward, surpassing a key hurdle in making Uruguay, the Southern Cone nation of 3.3 million, the first country in the world to decriminalize and regulate the sale and purchase of marijuana when the lower house of Uruguay’s parliament, the Cámara de Representantes (Chamber of Representatives) passed a legalization bill by a narrow 50-46 margin late Wednesday, which will allow the bill to sail smoothly through the upper house and to enactment.

Far from transforming Uruguay into a drug haven, however, Simon Romero, writing for The New York Times, explains the highly regulated nature of what will become the Uruguayan marijuana market, which would place strict limits on the growth, use and sale of the drug:

Under the bill, which could become law as early as this month, people would be allowed to grow marijuana in their homes, limited to six plants per household. They would also be permitted to form cooperatives allowed to cultivate 99 plants. In addition, private companies could grow marijuana under the bill, though their harvests could be bought only by the government, which would market the drug in licensed pharmacies.

To buy marijuana in pharmacies, Uruguayans would be required to enter their names into a federal registry, which is intended to remain confidential, and would be limited to buying 40 grams per month. And in a move to prevent foreign tourists from flocking to Uruguay to smoke marijuana, the legislation would restrict legal purchases to Uruguayans. Marijuana use is already largely tolerated by the Uruguayan authorities.

As remarkable as it seems, and despite international criticism of the Uruguayan measure, it was only a matter of time before a Latin American country takes the step to legalize the drug.  Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos and Guatemalan president Otto Pérez Molina, neither of whom are exactly left-wing ideologues have both made strident calls for marijuana legalization, and other Latin American leaders, such as former Mexican president Felipe Calderón, have called into question the longstanding U.S. anti-drug policy that’s launched a 40-year ‘War on Drugs’ that turned out to become more a war on Latin America, wreaking havoc and escalating violence from México to Perú.  Even within the United States, public opinion is turning away from criminalization — California’s ‘medical’ marijuana industry is booming and voters in Washington and Colorado elected in November 2012 to legalize marijuana in those states.

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What’s even more remarkable is the rise of the Uruguayan president who’s likely to be the first to make it happen.  In a region with sometimes eccentric leaders, the 78-year old Mujica — or as he’s affectionately known among Uruguayos, ‘Pepe’ — stands out.

A former leftist guerrilla in the Tupamaros movement, Mujica spent much of Uruguay’s military government that spanned the 1970s and early 1980s in prison.  As Romero writes in a profile of Mujica for The Times earlier this year, prison life was about as grim as imaginable for the one-time rebel fighter:

He spent 14 years in prison, including more than a decade in solitary confinement, often in a hole in the ground. During that time, he would go more than a year without bathing, and his companions, he said, were a tiny frog and rats with whom he shared crumbs of bread.

The sometimes violent tactics of the Tupamaros, which drew its inspiration from Fidel Castro’s Cuban guerrilla effort, weren’t without controversy.  But though he rarely discusses those days, his wife, Lucía Topolansky, is also a former Tupamaro, and while he has long since eschewed the more radical elements of his past, he has retained a strikingly humble approach to material wealth.  Mujica, who drives himself in a 1987 Volkswagen Beetle, has been labeled by the BBC to label him as ‘the world’s poorest president’:

President Mujica has shunned the luxurious house that the Uruguayan state provides for its leaders and opted to stay at his wife’s farmhouse, off a dirt road outside the capital, Montevideo.  The president and his wife work the land themselves, growing flowers.  This austere lifestyle – and the fact that Mujica donates about 90% of his monthly salary, equivalent to $12,000 (£7,500), to charity – has led him to be labelled the poorest president in the world.

As president, he has presided over a strong economy, though the GDP growth rate has fallen from 8.9% in 2010 to 5.7% in 2011 and an estimated 3.5% in 2012 — a slowing growth rate, yes, but one that’s consistently overperformed Brazil’s GDP growth in the past three years, one that is now overperforming the increasingly troubled Argentine economy, and one that would make the United States or the European Union feel like it’s experiencing an economic boom.  Mujica has been an aggressive champion of freer trade, and for expanding Mercosur, the South American free trade bloc.  He’s also a proponent of wind and other forms of renewable energy, and he’s a tireless booster of Uruguay exports, half of which are agricultural products, notably beef and grain products.

But his real legacy, even before the push for marijuana legalization, has been on social policy.  Yesterday, for example, Uruguay’s same-sex marriage act took effect after the Chamber of Deputies passed the law on an 81-6 vote last December.  He’s also signed legislation legalizing abortion restrictions.  But while those measures had broad popular appeals, polls have shown that up to two-thirds of Uruguayan voters are wary of legalizing marijuana.

As Uruguayan presidents cannot run for consecutive terms in office, much of Mujica’s devil-may-care approach to controversial issues, especially drug legalization, lies in the fact that he’s not running for reelection.  But it’s also in keeping with his honest, everyman persona, which has afforded him broad popularity, even among his critics. That popularity has made it easier for Mujica to champion unpopular issues, just as it has made it easier to deflect the loquacious president’s gaffes, such as when he was caught on tape disparaging both Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her late husband, former president Néstor Kirchner: ‘esta vieja es peor que el tuerto,‘ which roughly translates to ‘the old woman is worse than the cross-eyed one.’

But unlike the Kirchners, who have hewn a relatively populist neo-Peronista course for Argentina, which remains shut out of global capital markets, and unlike other leftists like the late Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, Mujica has been firmly on the lulista left, and like former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, he’s spent his political career moving from leftist roots — even more radical than Lula’s trade union roots in Brazil — to the political center.  Continue reading Meet José Mujica, the Uruguayan president who’s on the path to legalizing marijuana

Who is Roberto Azevêdo? (And does he matter?)

The only dispute between México and Brazil since the emergence of the World Trade Organization is a minor matter — Brazil opened a case in 2000 when it accused México of enacting anti-dumping measures on electronic transformers that were tougher than allowed under the WTO agreement.  Brazil, as it turned out, sought consultations with México, and the case never proceeded to a full WTO panel.Mexico Flag IconWTO flagbrazil

But this week’s seen the conclusion of a contest between the two Latin American countries with much more wide-ranging consequences than policy on electronic transformers — the final round to select a new director-general, and it’s a contest that Roberto Azevêdo, a Brazilian diplomat and trade representative, has won the final nomination for the job, and will likely be officially confirmed as the next director-general on May 14.

Azevêdo defeated former Mexican trade minister Herminio Blanco, in a contest between two men that represent the two largest economies in Latin America.  As Brazil’s man in Geneva for the past five years, Azevêdo won the post in large part due to his status as a knowledgeable WTO insider.  Blanco, who helped draft the landmark North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s among the United States, Canada and México, had more high-level experience in government (Azevêdo has never been a cabinet-level minister in Brazil’s government), but has spent his time out of government in the private sector, not in Geneva.

To a degree, the showdown marks the growing, if friendly, rivalry between México and Brazil — the Mexican economy, with a GDP of $1.76 trillion, and an estimated 2012 growth rate of 3.8%, is expected to overtake Brazil’s economy in the next decade.  With a GDP of $2.36 trillion, Brazil remains the largest economy in Latin America, and it’s forecast to improve on a paltry 2012 GDP growth rate of 1.7%.

Azevêdo’s win demonstrates that Brazil, one of the four initially identified ‘BRIC’ emerging economies, remains a widely respected player in global economic policymaking, despite its economy’s recent stumbles and a somewhat ambivalent attitude toward global trade from its center-left presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, though Brazil was a founding member of the South American free trade bloc, Mercosur (Mercado Común del Sur) in 1991.  Blanco’s loss is a rare diplomatic setback to Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office less than six months ago and has already enacted a whirlwind of domestic reforms that have made his country once again a darling of international investors.

Azevêdo will succeed Pascal Lamy, the Frenchman who’s been the WTO’s director-general since 2005, and he’ll take over the organization at a time when its role in global trade seems to be on the decline.  The Doha round of negotiations, which began way back in November 2001, now seem nearly hopeless, with the WTO members split between the developed world and the developing world.

Indeed, the developed/developing struggle came to define the final round of the race to become the next director-general, with the United States, the European Union, Japan and South Korea allegedly backing México’s Blanco, and China and the rest of the developing world backing Brazil’s Azevêdo.  Despite the divide, U.S. and E.U. officials were never intensely opposed to Azevêdo, who will become the first Latin American director-general of the WTO (or its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and the first director-general from the ‘global south’ since Thailand’s Supachai Panitchpakdi held the job from 2002 to 2005.

But the last major Doha negotiations broke down in July 2008, and they haven’t resumed in any significant way since the global financial crisis that exploded later that year.  While the WTO has seen its membership grow by 17 since the Doha round began (including China in 2001, Saudi Arabia in 2005, Vietnam in 2007 and Russia in 2012), many countries have moved toward bilateral and regional trade accords.  Some WTO proponents fear that such smaller trade agreements undermine the role of the global trade regime, though proponents argue that regional agreements work toward the same underlying goals of greater free trade among the world’s nations.

In particular, the United States is kicking off talks for two of the most ambitious regional trade agreements in U.S. trade history that would far outweigh the impact NAFTA made in the 1990s — the Trans-Pacific Partnership among various Asian, North American and South American nations and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the European Union and the United States. Continue reading Who is Roberto Azevêdo? (And does he matter?)

Lula’s Maduro endorsement highlights strategic Brazilian ties to Venezuela

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Though the full-throated nature of the endorsement of former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of acting Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro is perhaps somewhat of an eyebrow-raiser, it should not be unexpected, and it highlights the extent to which much of official Latin America has a vested interest in the continuation of chavismo — for now at least. brazilVenezuela Flag Icon

Lula is perhaps second to just Fidel Castro in terms of living politicians who are nearly universally popular throughout Latin America, so his hearty endorsement gives Maduro some international credibility, extolling both Chávez and Maduro for their passion for the rights of the poor, and it may well sway some voters who are on the fence between Maduro and challenger Henrique Capriles:

Lula says in a video released by VTV, astate-controlled television station, that he got to know Maduro in his years as foreign minister, and that Maduro will carry on Chávez’s grand hope of transforming Venezuela into a more just country where oil wealth is shared with those suffering most in society.  While Lula (pictured at top, left, with Chávez) notes that the decision is for Venezuelans alone, and he doesn’t want to interfere, but he could not help but share his testimony about Maduro, declaring, ‘Maduro Presidente; es la Venezuela que Chávez soñó‘ (Maduro for President! It’s the Venezuela of which Chávez dreamed!

But as Reuters noted last month, there may be more to Lula’s endorsement than just ideological solidarity:

“In the near term, a Maduro win would be best,” said Jose Augusto de Castro, head of Brazil’s Foreign Trade Association….

Key infrastructure projects launched during the 14 years of Chavez’s government, from the Caracas metro expansion to bridges across the Orinoco river that divides Venezuela, are run by Brazilian firms like Odebrecht.

Lula refused throughout his tenure as president from 2003 to 2010 to criticize Chávez openly, to the consternation of U.S. foreign policymakers.  But Chávez’s more strident socialist path may have made Lula’s more moderate leftism seem even tamer in contrast, and Lula’s example in Brazil stands as a pointed counter-example to chavismo in many ways — Lula managed to reduce poverty in Brazil much as Chávez did in Venezuela, but he did so while also cultivating ties to the business elite and development from the United States, the European Union and the People’s Republic of China alike.

Lula’s friendship with Chávez meant that Brazilian firms were shielded from many of the tumultuous aspects of doing business in Venezuela, most of all Chávez’s snap decisions to expropriate and nationalize industries.  Furthermore, Brazil has benefitted from Venezuela’s oil wealth, and trade between the two countries quintupled over the course of Lula’s presidency, though the ties were strategical as well:

[T]he main goals of Lula and Chávez were geopolitical. Samuel Pinheiro Guimarães, the most influential diplomat in the Brazilian chancellery, explained that Brazil’s strategy sought to prevent the “removal” of Chávez through a coup, to block the reincorporation of Venezuela into the North American economy, to extend Mercosur with the inclusion of Bolivia and Ecuador and to hinder the US project to consolidate the Pacific Alliance, which includes Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.

If you didn’t need a reminder, Latin American leaders and politicians from the moderate left, populist left and the right all attended Chávez’s funeral in March — showcasing just how entrenched chavismo has become in the region, if for no other reason than as a channel for oil subsidies and alternative finance.

Indeed, with the suspension of Paraguay from Mercosur (Mercado Común del Sur) following the impeachment and removal of Fernando Lugo in June 2012, Brazil and other countries wasted little time in making Venezuela a full member — Paraguay’s senate had long blocked Venezuela’s membership.

Campaigning kicked off today officially for the April 14 presidential race.  I attempted yesterday to argue a rationale for supporting each candidate — the policy case for Maduro is here, and the policy case for his challenger, Capriles, is here.

Haddad (and Lula) triumph over Serra in São Paulo mayoral race

Fernando Haddad, a former education minister, defeated José Serra, a longtime powerhouse of the Brazilian center-right, in today’s mayoral runoff in Brazil’s most populous city, São Paulo amid several runoffs from municipal elections in Brazil on Oct. 14.  

The result will be a setback to Serra’s national aspirations, but will embolden Haddad’s party, the governing Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers’ Party), the current president Dilma Rousseff, and her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.  In particular, Haddad is seen very much as Lula’s protégé, and Lula campaigned vigorously on his behalf.  Haddad won the runoff with just about 56% of the vote to just 44% for Serra.  Haddad had served as education minister for Lula first, then Rousseff, since 2005, stepping down earlier this year to run for mayor.  As education minister, Haddad instituted national standardized testing in Brazil.

His victory will give Brazil’s governing party control over Brazil’s primary city for the first time in eight years.

Serra has been a fixture in Brazilian politics since the 1980s, when he was first elected as a federal deputy to the Brazilian congress.  He served as a minister of planning, then as a minister of health, in the administration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1994 to 2002), which preceded Lula’s presidency.  After losing the presidential race to Lula in 2002, Serra became the mayor of São Paulo from 2005 to 2006, leaving in the middle of his term to run for the position of governor of São Paulo state, which he won and held from 2007 to 2010.  His 2010 presidential run was much more competitive, but he still lost to Rousseff in a runoff by a 56% to 44% margin.

In many ways, the mayoral race was seen as the continuation of the long-running fight between the Lula and Serra that began with the 2002 presidential election — both Lula and Serra are thought to be considering a run in the 2014 presidential election as well.  Lula, who was limited from seeking three consecutive terms, stepped aside on behalf of his successor, Rousseff, and it is uncertain if she will seek reelection in her own right. Continue reading Haddad (and Lula) triumph over Serra in São Paulo mayoral race

Four key elections underway today in Ukraine, Italy, Lithuania and Brazil

It’s a quadruple-threat Sunday for world elections!

Ukraine: parliamentary elections. In Ukraine, voters will go to the polls for legislative elections to select 450 members of the unicameral parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.  The elections will be a key test for Ukraine’s fledgling democratic institutions eight years after the ‘Orange Revolution.’  Pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, whose support is based in the eastern half of the country, is hoping to win an outright majority in a campaign that has been far from free and fair.  Two center-right groups are vying for the opposition vote — a bloc led by former prime minister and presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko, who has been imprisoned on politically-motivated charges and a new anti-corruption group led by heavyweight champion Vitaliy Klychko.  Unlike in the previous 2007 parliamentary elections (which were fully by proportional representation), today’s elections will be determined one-half by proportional representation and one-half through direct single-member districts.  That means the anti-Yanukovych vote could splinter, allowing the government to consolidate its control over Ukraine.  The election result will likely determine whether the former Soviet republic of 45 million people will continue its turn toward Europe as a potential European Union member.

Lithuania: parliamentary runoff. Nearby, in another former Soviet republic of just over three million people — Lithuania, voters return to the polls for a runoff after a vote two weeks ago that saw the triumph of two leftist parties: the populist Darbo Partija (DP, Labour Party), led by Russian-born Viktor Uspaskich, won 19.96% and the more center-left Lietuvos socialdemokratų partija (LSDP, Social Democratic Party of Lithuania) won 18.45%.  The governing Tėvynės sąjunga – Lietuvos krikščionys demokratai (TS-LKD, Homeland Union — Lithuanian Christian Democrats)  of prime minister Andrius Kubilius won just 14.93%, a defeat for Kubilius after a difficult campaign that reflected the realities of four years of grinding austerity and difficult economic conditions.  Half (70) of the seats in Lithuania’s unicameral parliament, the Seimas, were determined by the October 14 vote, while 71 more seats are determined in single-member districts, and many of those will be determined in today’s runoff vote. It’s virtually certain that the Social Democrats and Labour will form the next government, likely under the leader of the Social Democrats and former finance minister, Algirdas Butkevičius rather than the corruption-plagued Uspaskich, although either the Social Democrats or Labour may ultimately wind up with more seats after today’s vote.

São Paulo: mayoral runoff. In Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo, home to nearly 11 million people, voters will choose a mayor in a contest that will have implications for Brazil’s national politics.  Voters will choose between the top two candidates from the Oct. 14 vote: Fernando Haddad, the candidate of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers’ Party) of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and a former education minister in Lula’s administration; and José Serra, the candidate of the center-right Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB, the Brazilian Social Democracy Party), who lost the Brazilian presidency to Lula in 2002 and, more narrowly, in 2010 to Rousseff.  Serra, himself a former mayor of São Paulo from 2004 to 2006, when he won election as the governor of São Paulo state, despite a pledge to serve his entire term as mayor,  Serra led the vote two weeks ago with 30.75% to 28.99% for Haddad.  Serra and Haddad edged out Celso Russomanno, a famous television consumer advocate in the 1990s, with support from the evangelist Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, who had been the frontrunner throughout the campaign, who finished with just 21.6o%.  Polls show Haddad with a double-digit lead over Serra, however, which could effectively end Serra’s hopes for a third run at the presidency.

Sicily: regional parliamentary elections.  Finally, in the southern Italian region of Sicily, voters will select the 90 members of Sicily’s unicameral regional parliament.  Three parties are vying for the largest share of the vote, and 80 seats are awarded by proportional representation: a center-right coalition led by European parliament member Nello Musumeci and backed by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (who was convicted Friday for tax fraud) and his Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Freedom); a center-left coalition led by Rosario Crocetta (pictured above, top), the openly gay mafia-fighting former mayor of Gela (Sicily’s sixth-largest city); and the new anti-austerity protest party, the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, Five Star Movement) of blogger and comedian Beppe Grillo, who kicked off his party’s Sicily campaign by swimming across the Strait of Messina.  Radical leftists and a conservative Sicilianist/autonomist coalition are also expected to win significant support. The election is a significant test in advance of national elections expected to come in April 2013 following the technocratic government of prime minister Mario Monti, who has pledged not to run in his own right.