Brasil

The Brazilian referendum

Emir Sader

03/10/2014

Opinión

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This Sunday’s elections in Brazil are in effect a referendum on whether the country is on a good track since the Lula government of 2003, or if it is heading the wrong way and the country needs a radical and immediate change of course. The first alternative is summed up in Dilma Rousseff, who considers it necessary to improve and deepen the transformations carried out by the Lula government and her own. For all the other candidates – of the right or of the extreme left – there need to be drastic changes in Brazilian policy.

After all the ups and downs, it seems as if the electoral scene has returned to its beginnings, with Dilma as favourite and – this is the only novelty – a dispute between the two main candidates on the right: Aecio Neves and Marina Silva, for the second place. The style of the confrontation changed since the point when Marina stood out as principal candidate of the opposition, defending a clearly neoliberal platform, identical, in essentials, to that of Aceo Neves. Thus the confrontation remains between a neoliberal project and a post-liberal one.

After having been affected by the impressive launching of Marina’s Campaign, for about a month, following the suspicious aircraft accident of August 13, Dilma recovered her previous levels of support and in fact has improved on them, assuming the lead in each of the five regions of the country. Marina, after an initial low level of rejection – as she inherited the greater part of the anti- PT votes of Aecio – to more than twice the total on that side, ceased to increase her support and began a no less impressive decline, to the point where she still contests the second place with Aecio.

Because the campaign appeared to be oriented towards a win for Dilma in the first round, when the aircraft accident took place, the right immediately transferred the Aecio votes to Marina, who appeared to be moving forward with unstoppable momentum. Marina immediately took advantage of this trend and announced clearly neoliberal principles to direct her campaign, as well as the campaign coordination team, with the same pattern of these principles. She revealed that her “educator” – in her own words – is none less than the heiress of the Itau Bank, one of the biggest private banks in Brazil, who announced the proposal of an Independent Central Bank in Marina’s name.

The support for Aecio fell to insignificant numbers, with his votes transferred to Marina and the right strongly supporting her. The Dilma campaign, once it recovered from the blow, retrieved the initiative, looking to unmask the meaning of the Marina candidacy, beyond her proposals for a “new politics”, beyond left and right, and that she would govern “with the best” of each party, etc. etc.

Marina’s proposals soon found an echo in the international media lobbies, as well as in the United States, who immediately made her their – apparently invincible – candidate.

The Dilma counteroffensive was not slow in making an impact. They began to lay bare the neoliberal character of the Marina candidacy, under the veneer of an image that hardly responded to the reality: an alliance with the worst of the old politics, whose proposals meant aligning the government with the private banks, and Brazil with the United States in foreign policy. They showed Marina was not only incoherent but also contradictory and incapable of establishing a political course for the country.

Marina soon stopped growing in her support and began to fall, while Dilma began to increase her support. At one time Marina had obtained, according to polls, ten points over Dilma in the second round. From there her growth stopped, the rejection levels rose, her candidacy lost the initiative, and she had to dedicate herself to responding to the accusations, remaining in a defensive position.

The picture as we come to the end of the first round is that of an ample advantage for Dilma in the first round – something like 15% of preferences –, and with an advantage of at least four or five points, or even nine or ten, depending on which poll, in the second round. With the tendency of Dilma growing, she is now ahead in all five regions of the country, including even among the young people, reinforcing her leadership among the poorest in the Northeast and the North of the country.

With the sharp fall of Marina, Aecio now disputes second place. At the moment it is not clear whether Dilma could win in the first round, nor whom she would face in the second round, in the event that this were necessary. What is certain is that, although at least part of the votes for Marina and Aecio would join in the second round, Dilma remains the favourite.

This would mean the triumph of the model of economic development involving a distribution of wealth, begun by Lula and continued by Dilma, as well as continuation of the established foreign policy of Brazil, the result of at least 16 years of PT government, the longest cycle of government by one political force, in democracy. The nightmare of the right, in addition to a fourth consecutive defeat, is that of a return of Lula in 2018, maybe even for more than one mandate, which would add up to almost a quarter-century of PT governments.

(Translated from the Spanish of ALAI by Jordan Bishop)

- Emir Sader, Brazilian sociologist y political scientist, is the coordinator of the Laboratório de Políticas Públicas of the Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro (Uerj).

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