Presidential, congressional, gubernatorial and state elections were held in Brazil on October 6, 2014, with a presidential and gubernatorial runoffs on October 26, 2014.
No, this blog isn’t dead! This superbly detailed but ridiculously long post took up most of my busy time, preventing me from posting about other elections as I had wished. I hope to cover a few of the elections I have missed. I still welcome guest posts, on any topic and recent election. Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas to all readers, and warm wishes for a happy election-filled New Year 2015.
Political and electoral system
The President of Brazil, the head of state and government of Brazil, is elected directly to a four-year term, renewable once (but with the possibility to run again after leaving office). The President is elected using a two-round system, in which a second round is held three weeks later if no candidate has won an absolute majority in the first round. Presidential candidates select a running-mate, who serves as Vice President in the event of their ticket’s election.
The National Congress of Brazil (Congresso Nacional do Brasil) is a bicameral legislature composed of the 81-member Federal Senate (Senado Federal), which represents the states and the 513-member Chamber of Deputies (Câmara dos Deputados), which represents the people. In the regular legislative process, both houses have equal powers – meaning that both of them must approve a bill for it to pass, and both houses must vote to override a President’s veto on a bill. Both houses have some reserved powers – for example, the Senate must confirm some presidential appointments and holds impeachment proceedings (which are initiated by the Chamber).
The Senate is composed of 81 senators representing Brazil’s 27 constituent units – 26 states and the Federal District (DF) – with 3 senators for each constituent unit, elected to eight-year terms with no term limits. Senators are elected every four years – two-thirds of the Senate is up for election at one time when each state elects two of its senators, and one-third is up four years later when each state elects one senator. Senators are elected by first past the post.
The Chamber of Deputies has 513 members, supposed to be apportioned between the states on the basis of population, but the Constitution establishes that no state may have more than 70 deputies or less than 8 deputies. This means that there is major misrepresentation in the Chamber, with deputies in the state of São Paulo representing over 570,000 people each while the eight deputies from the smallest state, Roraima, each represent only 53,000 people. Deputies are elected in each state by open-list proportional representation. Voters may vote for a party or a candidate on a party list, with the votes cast for the party directly and all its candidates being added with the seats distributed proportionally. Most Brazilians vote for individual candidates, rather than the party list. The candidates elected are those who have won the largest number of votes for a party. The effect of this electoral system is that political parties seek to maximize their votes, and thus seat count, by running celebrity or star candidates who are able to win a large number of votes. For example, a small party which has a very popular candidate who wins a large number of votes him/herself can drag other party candidates in with him, even if they won very few votes. In 2002, for instance, a small party run by a charismatic and popular leader had their leading poll over 1.5 million votes and therefore elected six seats – including four candidates who had won less than 1,000 votes!
Brazil is a federal state divided into 26 states and one Federal District. The states have power over matters not explicitly forbidden to them in the Constitution. Each state and the DF has a directly-elected Governor, who serves a four-year term renewable once. The Governor, elected on a ticket with a Vice Governor, is elected using a two-round system. The legislative power of each state is vested in a Legislative Assembly (Assembleia Legislativa), with the number of deputies in each state set according to a formula in the Constitution (Article 27). The largest state, São Paulo, elects 94 state deputies; the smallest states have 24 state deputies. Deputies in Legislative Assemblies are known as deputados estaduais (state deputies) or, in the DF, deputados distritais (district deputies) to differentiate them from members of the Chamber of Deputies, who are deputados federais (federal deputies). The DF’s government is organized like a state government, with an elected Governor and state legislature, but the DF has no state constitution and it has the powers of a state and a municipality.
Brazil has a strong and independent judiciary. The Supreme Federal Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal, STF) is the court of last resort with responsibility over constitutional law. It has 11 judges (called ‘ministers’) appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The 33-member Superior Court of Justice (Superior Tribunal de Justiça, STJ) is the highest appellate court for all non-constitutional questions of federal law. Courts have decided on a number of important issues in recent years, including same-sex marriage, but also on electoral matters including the Ficha Limpa law (Clean Slate Law), which renders ineligible for 8 years any candidate whose mandate was revoked, resigned office to escape impeachment or who was convicted by a collective body (the STF ruled in 2011 that the law could not apply to the 2010 elections and ruled it constitutional for future elections in 2012).
Registration and voting is compulsory for all citizens between 18 and 70, excepting the illiterate; registration and voting is voluntary for voters aged 16 to 18 and those over 70. Compulsory voting is enforced, with voters who did not vote being forced to provide adequate justification for not voting within 60 days after the election, or else they are fined. Candidates for any elected office must be registered with a political party (they may not run as an independent), and all candidates for office receive free airtime on radio and TV. While candidates in second rounds have equal airtime, the duration of each candidate’s airtime in the first round is determined by the size and weight of the parties in a candidate’s coalition – meaning that there exists a real incentive for candidates to be supported by a large number of parties, even small ones, in order to increase their airtime.
In order to run for another office, the President, cabinet ministers, governors and mayors must resign from their respective offices at least six months before the election. An incumbent seeking reelection to the same office, however, does not resign, which has sometimes raised questions about incumbents using the advantages of their office and state resources to campaign for reelection.
Although Brazilian political parties play an important role in the political process, many parties in Brazil have little formal ideologies or coherent principles, and function as patronage machines seeking power with little interest in the general ideological direction of the government. Because of legal regulations on free airtime or the number of candidates allowed to run, larger parties have an interest in contracting electoral coalitions with smaller parties – oftentimes the smaller parties are the most venal and corrupt parties – for strategic electoral purposes. Many of these small parties which form coalitions with one another are known as ‘rental parties’ or ‘parties for hire’ (partido de aluguel) meaning that they will sell themselves to the highest bidder when election season rolls around. In return, these ‘parties for hire’ can win seats in Congress and, as it gets a substantial number of seats, its bidding power on the government increases and it gains access to the spoils of power (lucrative posts in public institutions and agencies, government contracts, public works in their state). The harsh and unpleasant reality of Brazilian party politics means that it is very difficult for a politician to be elected to high office without making strategic alliances with these powerful patronage parties.
There are, of course, parties with more coherent ideologies and politicians with principles – although these parties and politicians are forced to deal with the venal parties if they want to get anywhere.
Historical background
In the 2010 elections, Dilma Rousseff was elected President of Brazil as the anointed successor of popular two-term outgoing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula), first elected to office in 2002.
Lula was a left-wing trade unionist, who grew up poor in Brazil’s impoverished Nordeste (Northeast) before moving, like many Northeasterners, to São Paulo – Brazil’s economic powerhouse – to work in the factories in São Paulo’s industrial suburbs. He rose through the ranks of the steel workers’ trade unions in São Bernardo do Campo due to his leadership skills and charisma, and gained national prominence due to his leadership in large strikes in favour of workers’ rights during the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985). In 1980, Lula led the foundation of the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT), a socialist party founded by independent left-wing trade unionists, left-wing intellectuals and Catholics influenced by Liberation Theology and, in 1983, he participated in the foundation of the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT), a trade union confederation which broke with the corporatist system of labour relations instituted by President Getúlio Vargas (1930-1945, 1951-1954) and practiced by the old varguista Brazilian Labour Party (PTB). The PT became one of the smaller parties which opposed the military regime in its waning years and supported democratization, notably the large-scale Diretas Já campaign for direct presidential elections in 1984. Between 1989 and 2002, Lula lost three successive presidential elections.
After having been ruled by the military since a 1964 coup, Brazil’s transition to democracy was negotiated and controlled by the military regime, beginning with General Ernesto Geisel (President, 1974-1979) policy of distensão, or political opening. Geisel’s successor, General João Figueiredo (1979-1985), decreed a general amnesty in 1979, passed a political reform which ended the rigid two-party system imposed by the military’s Ato Institucional Dos in 1965 (allowing for the registration of parties such as the PT) and allowed for the direct election of state governors in 1982 (the first direct elections of governors since the 1960s, after the regime abolished direct elections of governors in 1966 through AI-3). However, Figueiredo struggled to retain control of the transition process, facing strong pressure from a united and energized opposition movement (led by the Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro, or PMDB, the successor to the MDB, the sole tolerated legal opposition party to the regime) and reactionary opposition from military intelligence hardliners (linha dura). The Democratic Social Party (PDS), the pro-military party, split over the choice of a presidential successor ahead of the 1984 elections (which would still be indirect, through an electoral college dominated by the PDS, after the failure of the Diretas Já‘s campaign to amend the constitution for immediate direct elections). The PDS nominated Paulo Maluf, the infamously corrupt former ‘bionic’ mayor and governor of São Paulo; a choice which was immediately rejected by Maluf’s opponents including Vice President Aureliano Chaves, former Pernambuco governor Marco Maciel, the very powerful Bahian political boss Antônio Carlos Magalhães (ACM) and Maranhão senator José Sarney. Chaves, ACM and Marco Maciel participated in the foundation of the Liberal Front Party (Partido da Frente Liberal, PFL) and endorsed the opposition candidacy of Tancredo Neves, a veteran moderate opposition politician (who had served under the presidency of Getúlio Vargas and as Prime Minister under João Goulart prior to the 1964 coup) who was spearheading the movement for democratization in Brazil. José Sarney joined the PMDB and was Tancredo Neves’ running-mate, thus forming a broad coalition allying long-time opponents of the regime with defectors from the pro-regime party. Tancredo Neves was elected President by the electoral college, but he was rushed to the hospital on the eve of his inauguration and he died after seven surgical operations a bit over a month later. To allow for a smooth transition, it was agreed that Sarney would be allowed to become President, despite Tancredo never having been inaugurated formally.
Sarney’s government faced, besides the management of the transition and the adoption of the Constitution, hyperinflation. Sarney’s first response, the Cruzado Plan – which included a price and wage freeze, a new currency and a ‘wage trigger’ to automatically adjust wages when inflation reached 20% – was initially very popular, leading to an explosion of consumption and a massive victory for the PMDB in the 1986 elections, but ultimately failed because the price freeze distorted the profit margins of companies, leading to disinvestment and declining production and resulting in a serious supply crisis. The government ran through two other plans to tackle hyperinflation, but both failed. When Sarney left office, he was highly unpopular, seen as corrupt and unable to handle the economy. Nevertheless, Sarney did oversee the adoption of the 1988 Constitution and the restoration of democracy – with universal suffrage, civil and political liberties.
In 1989, the first direct presidential election since the 1964 military coup, Lula placed second in the first round with 16.1% and went on to face Fernando Collor de Mello, a young and suave populist-conservative governor of Alagoas (a small state in the Nordeste) who ran a very anti-Sarney campaign. In a dirty runoff campaign in which Collor was openly favoured by the powerful Globo media empire, Lula’s image as an angry radical worried conservative voters throughout the country and he was ultimately defeated by Collor, 49.4% to 44.2%. Collor took office as Brazil was facing hyperinflation. Collor quickly adopted drastic measures to fight inflation by aiming to sharply cut the amount of money in circulation. His Plano Collor included the introduction of (yet another) new currency, an 18-month freeze in all overnight deposits over US$1,300, a tax on financial transactions (stock shares, gold and financial titles), a price and wage freeze, an increase in utility prices, the dismissal of 360,000 public employees, exchange rate liberalization, elimination of tax incentives, abolition of several government institutes and Collor’s government promised wide-reaching neoliberal reforms to the economy including privatization and deregulation. Inflation did fall from 2947% in 1990 to 477% in 1991, but the Plano Collor’s initial success proved fleeting and inflation shot up again – to 1022% in 1992. In 1991 and 1992, Collor’s government was hit by an avalanche of revelations which showed that PC Farias, Collor’s sketchy campaign treasurer, was running a huge corruption scheme and embezzling millions in public monies by manipulating public contracts. In late September 1992, the Chamber achieved more than the two-thirds majority required to suspend Collor from office and Collor resigned at the end of the year hours before the Senate voted on his removal from office – which it ended up doing anyway.
His Vice President, Itamar Franco – a rather odd and erratic personality – needed to deal with the crisis of hyperinflation. Facing a real social and economic crisis, with inflation roaring at over 2075% in 1994, Itamar turned, in May 1993, to Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a prominent academic and sociologist exiled during most of the military regime. FHC took a gamble and presented an ambitious plan with the potential for high rewards but huge risks: the Plano Real. His plan cut public spending (by forcing Congress to kill its pork-barreling habits), increased tax collection, cracked down on tax evasion, required heavily indebted states to pay off their debts to the federal government and introduced the Unidade Real de Valor, a non-monetary reference currency (mandatory conversion of values) designed to break the psychological inertia of Brazilian inflation and ease the transition to the introduction of the Brazilian real on July 1, 1994. The Plano Real was a real success – inflation dropped from 46.6% to 6.1% between June and July 1994 (the introduction of the real), and inflation in 1995 fell to 66% and 16% in 1996. FHC, backed by powerful conservative bosses, announced his presidential candidacy in March 1994 and, after July, rode on the successful introduction of the new currency. In October, FHC was elected by the first round with 54.3% against 27% for Lula, who had been the initial favourite since the fallout from the Collor crisis.
FHC was a member of the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira, PSDB), a party which he had helped create in 1988. The PSDB was founded by progressive reformist dissidents of the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB) which had, under Sarney’s presidency, taken the form of an ideologically incoherent patronage-based alliance of regional political bosses. The PSDB’s founders included, besides FHC, Mário Covas, Franco Montoro and former student opposition leader José Serra. In 1989, the PSDB supported Lula in the second round over Collor and the party – especially Mário Covas – were opponents of Collor’s government before it was cool. FHC’s 1994 candidacy was made possible through the support of the PFL, particularly ACM, who provided FHC with his Vice President, Marco Maciel.
In office, Cardoso’s government maintained a strict macroeconomic policy aimed at ensuring the long-term success of the Plano Real and Brazil’s economic recovery. His government promoted privatizations of various state-owned companies (notably Telebrás, the state-owned monopoly telecom company); liberalized the energy sector with a 1997 law which broke Petrobras’ monopoly on exploration, production, refining and transportation of oil by allowing concessions of ‘well to wheel’ activities to private Brazilian companies (a model for the recent reform to Mexico’s public energy monopoly) and passed a fiscal responsibility law to impose controls on states and municipalities’ spending. The government’s HIV/AIDS policy, which encouraged production of generic drugs, was very successful and prevented an AIDS pandemic similar to that in South Africa. In 1997, Congress approved a constitutional amendment allowing for the immediate reelection of the President, governors and mayors – an amendment which allowed Cardoso to run for a second term in office in 1998, which he handily won by the first round, once again defeating Lula. There have been allegations that the government bribed congressmen to approve the reelection amendment.
In his second term, FHC faced a far more difficult economic situation. Brazil’s growing but fragile economy was hit by the successive regional and global economic crises of the late 1990s and early 2000s, and structural problems in the Plano Real – such as deflationary monetary policies and an overvalued semi-fixed exchange rate – worsened the problems. The economic crises in Mexico, Russia and Asia during this period caused sharp drops in prices of commodities exported by Brazil and outflows of capital. In 1999, the Central Bank devalued the real and the government later decided to float the currency. The economic effect of the devaluation was less negative than originally expected, and the economy grew by 4% in 2001. However, the government’s popularity was hurt by power cuts in 2001-2002, the result of a lack of investments in electrical infrastructure in the past 10 years. FHC left office having presided over a welcome period of political and economic stability in Brazil. While his legacy is somewhat controversial, with his opponents on the left considering him a neoliberal (an inaccurate label – FHC is far closer, ideologically, to the centrist Third Way promoted in the late 1990s by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton) while his supporters claim that he laid the bases for Brazil’s good economic performance in the 2000s under Lula.
Lula’s fourth presidential candidacy was his successful one. His 2002 victory, with 61.3% in the runoff against FHC’s health minister José Serra, was the result of a calculated ideological moderation in the PT and the creation of a more appealing personal image for the candidate. Lula contracted the services of Duda Mendonça, a famous advertising guru and political strategist who had managed to elect Paulo Maluf as mayor of São Paulo in 1992; Lula became ‘Lula peace and love’, a consensual and moderate candidate very different from the angry bearded union radical of 1989; Lula’s PT allied with some of the ‘for hire’ small parties – his running-mate was senator José Alencar, an evangelical Christian textile businessman from the small centre-right Liberal Party (PL) and Lula pledged not to nationalize companies or default on Brazil’s foreign debt (two of his ‘scariest’ promises from 1989). Upon his victory, Lula promptly moved to allay the fears of investors by appointing an orthodox economist, Henrique Meirelles, as President of the Central Bank and another moderate, Antonio Palocci, as his Minister of Finance.
Lula pursued a conservative fiscal and monetary policy during his two terms in office. The Central Bank, which enjoyed wide autonomy, followed a strict inflation targeting policy which aimed – successfully – at keep inflation within a narrow band with a target of 4.5% in place since 2003. When Lula took office, inflation had been quite high – over 12.5% in 2002 and 9.3% in 2003 – but, in every subsequent year until he left office, Brazilian inflation was kept within the Central Bank’s bands (real inflation during Lula’s term fell between 7.6% and 3.1%). The Brazilian economy enjoyed strong growth rates during his term in office, at an average of 4% GDP growth per year between 2003 and 2010 – a higher average growth rate than under his predecessor’s two terms in power. Brazil weathered the 2008-9 global recession far better than most other G20 powers, with a small recession of 0.3% in 2009 but record growth of 7.5% in 2010. Lula’s terms in office also saw a significant decline in the unemployment rate, which fell from 12% when Lula took office in 2003 to 6.7% in 2010; with the Ministry of Labour reporting the creation of over 15 million jobs during his eight years in power, not considering layoffs – although job creation was erratic in the first term. Brazil’s public debt, which had increased significantly under FHC’s second term (79% in 2003), was reduced under Lula’s presidency, falling to 65% of GDP in 2010. The government and the Central Bank stuck to IMF commitments in achieving a ‘primary fiscal surplus’ and stuck to Cardoso’s anti-inflationary fiscal responsibility law. Brazil’s export economy performed well under Lula, thanks to increased exports of natural resources and agriculture (soybeans) and a great diversification of Brazil’s export partners which reduced Brazil’s traditional dependence on US and EU markets. In a change of course from his past anti-globalization rhetoric, the Lula administration worked within the WTO and became an active player in trade disputes – notably against EU and US agricultural and sugar subsidies.
Although the Central Bank’s strict deflationary policy and high interest rates were criticized, Brazilian interest rates declined gradually during Lula’s presidency. The government’s orthodox and conservative economic policies displeased many leftist members of the PT, but were praised by investors. Critics attacked the government for insufficient investments in infrastructure, healthcare and education. To the PT’s base, however, the drop in the price of food and the rise in the minimum wage were real tangible achievements.
By far, the most successful and popular aspect of Lula’s presidency was the significant reduction in poverty and income inequality in one of the world’s most unequal countries. Upon taking office, Lula introduced a strategy to combat malnutrition: Fome Zero (Zero Hunger), whose initiatives ranged from creation of ‘people’s restaurants’, expanding access to microcredit, creation of cisterns in the Nordeste’s sertão, food banks to hold supplies, direct support for family agriculture. The efficiency of Fome Zero was soon brought into question, with claims that it was badly administered and not reaching enough people. In 2004, the program was effectively replaced by what has become the government’s biggest lasting achievement – Bolsa Familía. The program replaced FHC’s Bolsa Escola, a conditional cash transfer for poor families with children attending school. Bolsa Familía is a conditional cash transfer program to poor and very poor families granted on condition that children/dependents are attending school and vaccinated. The program currently serves about 14 million families, who receive an average of R$149.46 per month. Some critics of Bolsa Familía have claimed that the program ignores the quality of education and promotes welfare dependency rather than job creation, while other critics have charged that it is a clientelist program aimed at buying poor voters’ support. However, the program has generally received praise and international interest, including from the World Bank (which has debunked a number of myths about the program’s effects on dependency), and has contributed to the significant reduction in poverty and income inequality in Brazil. In 2003, 43% of Brazilians lived on less than $4 a day. In 2011, that number had fallen to 24%. While Brazil remains one of the world’s most unequal countries, the Gini coefficient has fallen from about 0.59 when Lula took office to 0.53 in 2011. Income inequality and poverty had remained high, with little change, under Brazil’s previous democratic presidents – including under FHC’s two terms.
Lula’s government took steps to confront racial inequalities (a longtime taboo subject in a country founded in good part on the myth of ‘racial democracy’), cracked down on slave labour in remote regions of the Amazon and Nordeste (over 32,000 people were freed from slave labour under Lula’s presidency), supported a rural electrification project, supported family agriculture and PT supporters pointed out that Lula distributed more land to landless peasants than his predecessor did. Brazil’s education system continues to be ranked near the very bottom in PISA rankings, despite real efforts by Lula’s government to improve educational outcomes. His government created ProUni to grant full or partial scholarships to low-income students and created 11 federal universities. On environmental issues, the government’s record was shoddier – Lula constantly tried (and struggled) to straddle both sides of the dispute, being sensitive both to environmentalists’ demands for conservation of the Amazon rainforest, and the importance of agribusiness to the economy. Marina Silva, Lula’s environment minister, faced constant hostility from other sectors of the government as she sought to limit deforestation and environmentally-destructive development, until she resigned from cabinet in 2008.
Lula’s government saw Brazil adopt a much more active foreign policy, breaking with a certain passivity in the past administrations, and Lula put much personal energy and time during his two terms in foreign state visits and hosting foreign leaders. His foreign policy aimed to open more markets for Brazilian exports, deepen ties with other major developing states through BRICS (Russia, India, China and South Africa), promote South American integration, rebuild the Mercosul and boosting Brazil’s weight in international organizations such as the UN (Brazil was a major contributor to the UN mission in Haiti) in the hopes of gaining a permanent seat for Brazil on the UNSC. Lula’s relations with the US, under the George W. Bush administration, were not as friendly as they had been under Cardoso (who had gotten along well with Clinton) – Brazil opposed Bush’s FTAA idea, strongly opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq and Brasília took some stances at odds with American foreign policy (on issues such as Iran, Israel-Palestine). Lula, as one of the key left-wing leaders elected in Latin America’s ‘Pink Wave’ in the 2000s, was friendly to Hugo Chávez and other left-wing regional leaders. But Brazil’s economic and strategic interests in some of these countries – particularly Bolivia and Paraguay – were at odds with the rhetoric of left-wing leaders in those countries (like Bolivia, where Petrobras had $3.5 billion investments when Evo Morales nationalized oil and gas). Lula’s policy with regards to Iran, Cuba and China was criticized by the opposition.
To win and maintain power in Brazil, politicians require to forge broad coalitions inevitably including slimy politicians and venal parties which represent vested interests and/or demand tangible benefits in exchange for their support. Lula’s 2002 coalition included the PT and Alencar’s PL and other small left-wing parties such as the Brazilian Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Brasileiro, PSB) – founded in 1985 and later joined by Miguel Arraes, a three-time left-wing governor of Pernambuco (first elected in 1962 in the then-conservative northeastern state, with Communist support, his government forced sugar mill and plantation owners to pay their employees minimum wage and he supported the creation of unions and peasants’ organizations); the Communist Party of Brazil (Partido Comunista do Brasil, PCdoB) – based on the 1962 faction which supported Maoism (later Hoxhaist after 1976, although ironically its Hoxhaist shift coincided with political moderation) and opposed ‘revisionism’ and was famous for bogging down the military regime for years in the Araguaia guerrilla (1969-1976); and the Brazilian Communist Party (Partido Comunista Brasileiro, PCB) – the PCdoB’s rival, disputing the legacy of the original Communist Party (founded in 1922) but marginalized by refusing the armed struggle during the military regime, the rise of non-communist trade unionism and later the fall of the Wall (the remaining PCB is now a hardcore left-wing party and abandoned the Lula coalition by 2006). However, Lula needed to seek the support of other parties to gain a congressional majority, meaning that he became reliant on the backing of fickle, venal parties – parts of the PMDB (which had officially backed Serra in 2002), the Progressive Party (Partido Progressista, PP – actually Paulo Maluf’s party and the descendant of the most conservative factions of the old military party, ARENA/PDS) and the Brazilian Labour Party (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro, PTB – the 1979 refoundation of Getúlio Vargas’ old corporatist workers’ party, and now a slimy ‘party for hire’ which has backed every government since Figueiredo). Some critics of the government claimed that Lula’s social policies only aimed at cosmetic amelioration rather than real changes, stemming from his unwillingness to challenge vested interests (which included the PT’s base in organized labour).
Shortly after taking office, the magazine Época showed that an advisor to José Dirceu (a loyal PT veteran), the then-Minister of the Casa Civil (Chief of Staff) and Lula’s éminence grise, had attempted to extort money for the PT from the sketchy boss of an illegal gambling game (jogo de bicho), Carlinhos Cachoeira. Lula rejected Dirceu’s offer to resign.
A far bigger scandal began in May 2005, when the opposition-aligned news magazine Veja released a video showing the boss of the state postal service negotiating a bribe. As part of the coalition agreement, the boss of the state postal service was nominated by the PTB’s federal deputy Roberto Jefferson, which intended to use control of that agency to milk money out of it. Feeling the pressure, Jefferson, in June 2005, decided to drop a bomb by alleging that the PT, coordinated by Dirceu and other PT apparatchiks, was paying a ‘monthly salaries’ (mensalão) to federal deputies (mostly from the PL, PP, PTB and PMDB) in exchange for their support. According to Jefferson, the elaborate vote-buying scheme (which was, however, not a novel idea in Brazilian politics) was coordinated by José Dirceu, administered by Delúbio Soares (the PT’s treasurer) and the money was handled by Marcos Valério (a PR/advertising businessman who received the money, by diverting resources from ad contracts, private bank loans or milking cash from telecom companies).
Jefferson was later impeached and stripped of his mandate and political rights for 8 years, but the scandal became one of the biggest corruption scandals in modern Brazilian democracy and had a grave impact on Lula’s government. The government and the PT initially denied all allegations, and tried to prevent the formation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry (CPI) and later, when proof added up, accused Delúbio Soares and Marcos Valério of negotiating loans without the knowledge of the PT leadership, or spinning the scandal as a mere (‘normal’) case of an illegal parallel campaign fund. The PT also tried to paint the opposition parties as hypocritical, pointing out similar vote buying cases involving PSDB politicians (notably the illegal financing, by similar means and with the help of Marcos Valério, of the 1998 reelection campaign of the PSDB governor of Minas Gerais Eduardo Azeredo) and accepted a CPI into the mensalão after extending its mandate to cover vote-buying allegations against the Cardoso administration for the re-election amendment. José Dirceu, however, resigned as Chief of Staff in June 2005 and was stripped of his mandate as federal deputy in December 2005. In July 2005, José Genoíno – a PT deputy and the president of the PT – resigned the party presidency after an aide was arrested with R$200,000 in a bag and $100,000 in underpants; later that month, Delúbio Soares, who had also resigned his party position, was expelled from the PT after taking full responsibility for illegal parallel campaign funds used for the PT’s electoral campaigns. Duda Mendonça, the political marketing guru, told a CPI that the PT had paid him for his services through an offshore account in the Bahamas. The finance minister, Antonio Palocci, was accused of receiving monthly payments from businessmen when he was mayor of Ribeirão Preto (SP). In August, Lula asked the Brazilian people for forgiveness and said that he felt betrayed – there is no definitive proof that Lula knew anything of the bribes being paid by his party to his congressional allies.
The revelation of the mensalão unleashed a wave of public attention into other cases of congressional greed and political corruption. In September, the PP president of the Chamber, Severino Cavalcanti – a corrupt personage whose appeal was based on lobbying for backbenchers’ spoils and privileges – was forced to resign the presidency of the Chamber for taking bribes from a restaurant owner in the Congress building. Cavalcanti, when he was elected to the Chamber’s presidency in February 2005 (replacing PT deputy João Paulo Cunha, accused of participating in the mensalão), had been a dissident from the government benches and beaten a PT deputy backed by the presidency, but by September he had become an ally of the PT in the mensalão scandal in return for a few goodies. He was replaced by PCdoB deputy Aldo Rebelo.
The scandals severely damaged the PT’s reputation, breaking its old (pre-power) reputation as an honest party fighting for less corrupt politics in Brazil. However, by early 2006, the scandal was running out of steam despite attempts by the PT’s opponents to keep it alive. Some other scandals hurt the government in 2006 and in its second term. In March 2006, Palocci was forced to resign after a buildup of reports of financial misbehaviour while he was mayor, that he had received illegal gambling money and that he leaked the bank records of a concierge who told the press about Palocci’s presence at parties organized by associates. Other scandals included a long-running scheme, tolerated by the health ministry, where deputies from small parties took commissions when mayors bought overpriced ambulances; the arrest of PT operatives very close to Lula attempting to illegally purchase an incriminating dossier against José Serra in the 2006 election; an expense scandal involving misuse of corporate credit cards by ministers or the participation of the son of Lula’s Chief of Staff in an influence peddling scheme in September 2010.
The corruption scandals during Lula’s term exposed the business behind Brazilian politics and governing. Deputies, for electoral and political purposes, seek access to pork or access to the spoils. A vast spoils system operates at the top of Brazilian politics – politicians from coalition partners are able to appoint the heads of public agencies or corporations or get their own ministerial portfolios, and proceed to milk the money out of those jobs by receiving contributions from appointed bureaucrats, rigging public tenders and controlling patronage. The mensalão scandal started with such a scheme – as part of the business transaction between the government and the PTB, the PTB appointed the head of the postal service, who was in turn expected to pay monthly bribes to the PTB. José Dirceu, a ‘prime minister’/Rasputin-like éminence grise in Lula’s first administration, was the man responsible for handing out appointments to the PT’s slimy allies. However, despite the intense corruption, Brazilian institutions worked – the government took real steps to increase transparency, independent law enforcement agencies (the federal police, the independent Prosecutor General of the Republic) and the courts did their jobs freely and Brazilian campaign finance legislation is tougher and more transparent than similar legislation in Spanish-speaking Latin American countries. Brazilian candidates for all offices must publicly disclose all of their assets to the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), the body which administers elections.
Lula was reelected in October 2006. The mess of the mensalão had faded in the minds of most voters, and Lula’s base rewarded him for his social policies. Lula was officially supported by the PT, the PCdoB and the new Brazilian Republican Party (Partido Republicano Brasileiro, PRB), founded by PL dissidents (including Vice President José Alencar) and considered by some as the ‘political arm’ of the evangelical neo-Pentecostal Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG), the third-largest evangelical denomination in Brazil and one of the most powerful and controversial evangelical churches (the UCKG is one of the richest religious denominations, owns several media sources, built a humongous replica of the Temple of Solomon in São Paulo and its leader bishop Edir Macedo is a billionaire). He received unofficial backing from the PL, the PSB and most of the PMDB.
His main opponent was the PSDB governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin. Alckmin’s political mentor was Mário Covas, one of the PSDB’s founding members, and he was elected vice-governor of the state of São Paulo as Mário Covas’ running-mate in 1994 (and reelected in 1998). He assumed office as governor in March 2001, after Covas died. Alckmin was reelected governor in 2002, winning 58.6% in the runoff against José Genoino (PT). Paulo Maluf (PP), the early favourite, was defeated in the first round. After a successful term as governor, Alckmin imposed himself as the PSDB’s presidential candidate over rival claims. Fairly uncharismatic and introverted – he was nicknamed chuchu (a bland green vegetable) – he had trouble taking off. Alckmin’s candidacy was supported by the three main opposition parties: the PSDB, the PFL (which would rename itself ‘Democrats’ or Democratas in 2007 in a bid to modernize its image, as a right-wing liberal party rather than a bunch of old conservative coronels from the Nordeste) and the Popular Socialist Party (Partido Popular Socialista, PPS). The PPS was actually founded in 1992 by reformist dissidents of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), led by Roberto Freire, mimicking the transformation of the Italian PCI into the social democratic PDS (and, like in Italy, a small hardline minority remained communists, in Brazil being led by famous architect Oscar Niemeyer). The PPS opposed FHC’s two governments – supporting Lula in 1994, and then running its own candidate – Ciro Gomes, a former governor of Ceará (1991-1994) and PSDB finance minister (1994-1995), in 1998 and 2002 (11% and 12% respectively), although Gomes (who had become Minister of National Integration in Lula’s cabinet) left the PPS to join the PSB when the PPS left the governing coalition in 2003.
Lula also faced candidacies from two PT dissidents. Heloísa Helena, an outspoken Alagoas senator from the PT’s left, had broken with the PT in 2003 due to major disagreements with the conservative direction of Lula’s economic policies and his opportunistic alliances with corrupt parties. Expelled from the PT in December 2003, she was one of the founding members of the Socialism and Freedom Party (Partido Socialismo e Liberdade, PSOL). Senator Cristovam Buarque, a former PT governor of the DF (1995-1999) and education minister (2003-2004), who left the PT in 2004, ran for the Democratic Labour Party (Partido Democrático Trabalhista, PDT). The PDT was founded in 1979, led by veteran leftist politician Leonel Brizola (the brother-in-law of deposed President João Goulart), who as PTB governor of Rio Grande do Sul (1959-1963) and federal deputy for Guanabara (1963-1964) was one of the main players in the highly-charged political debates which led up to the 1964 coup, pressuring Goulart to speed up controversial left-wing reforms including agrarian reforms and regulation of profit remittances by foreign corporations. In exile during the military regime, Brizola returned to Brazil with the amnesty in 1979 and created the PDT after losing the rights to the name PTB to Ivete Vargas, Getúlio Vargas’ grand-niece. In 1989, Brizola placed a close third in the first round of the presidential election (15.5% to Lula’s 16.1%). Brizola and brizolismo remained very powerful in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where he served as governor between 1983 and 1987 and again between 1991 and 1994. Brizola died in 2004. The PSOL and PDT both welcomed dissidents from the PT, as did the smaller Green Party (Partido Verde, PV).
In the first round, Lula won 48.6% against 41.6% for Alckmin, with Heloísa Helena winning 6.9% and Cristovam Buarque receiving only 2.6%. Lula had been widely expected to be reelected by the first round, but suffered from a late swing against him because of the backlash against the PT’s dirty tricks in the fake dossier against José Serra (the PSDB’s candidate for governor of São Paulo) and Lula’s refusal to participate in televised debates against his opponents. Alckmin, on the other hand, finished strong. However, Lula seized the initiative in the runoff campaign and claimed that Alckmin would privatize state-owned corporations and dismantle the Bolsa Familía (largely false accusations, besides the PSDB’s campaign focused on hitting the PT and Lula for corruption). Alckmin was unable to build on his first round result, and the runoff ended up as a Lula blowout: 60.8% to 39.2% for Alckmin, who lost votes from the first round.
Interestingly, the 2006 election was the realigning election in terms of voting patterns and the main coalitions/parties’ bases of support. Whereas in 2002, ‘Lula peace and love’ had fairly evenly distributed support throughout all regions and demographic groups, the 2006 election showed a much more polarized map and electorate. Lula swept the Nordeste with 77% (61.5% in 2002), Brazil’s poorest (and blackest/brownest) region, thanks to massive swings in his favour in the rural regions (particularly the arid and inhospitable sertão, home to the infamous latifúndios) – traditionally under the grip of conservative barons – where poor voters benefited from federal spending and Lula’s social programs. The success of the Lula coalition in the Nordeste has also had repercussions at the congressional and state level, where the PFL/DEM have suffered significant loses in their old regional base. On the other hand, Alckmin won the state of São Paulo and the South, the wealthiest (and whitest) regions of the country. Alckmin won 52.3% in São Paulo (state), which has always been fairly conservative despite being the PT’s cradle, and 53.5% in the South region; in 2002, Lula had won 55.4% in São Paulo and 58.8% in the South. In 2006, there was a clear polarization of voting patterns, with wealth, education and race (to a lesser extent) becoming the key variables. In past elections, such as 1989, there had been similar left-right polarization, but around different variables – in 1989, the main cleavage between Lula and Collor, for example, had been rural-urban.
The PMDB replaced the PT as the largest party in the Chamber of Deputies, while the opposition PSDB and PFL/DEM ranked as the third and fourth largest parties respectively. Paulo Maluf, who was himself elected federal deputy with the highest vote count of any candidate in the country, saw his party, the PP, win 42 seats. The PSB, PDT, PTB, PL, PPS, PV and PCdoB all won over 10 seats in the Chamber. In Amapá, former president José Sarney (PMDB) was reelected to the Senate, where he had been a key backer of the Lula government. In Alagoas, former president Fernando Collor was elected to the Senate for the tiny Partido Renovador Trabalhista Brasileiro (PRTB), although he jumped ship to the PTB within days.
In gubernatorial races, José Serra (PSDB) was elected governor of São Paulo in the first round, taking 57.9% against 31.7% for PT senator Aloizio Mercadante. Mercadante’s campaign, already in poor shape, was killed off by the PT’s fake dossier scandal. In Minas Gerais, popular PSDB governor Aécio Neves, the grandson of Tancredo Neves, was reelected with a huge 77% of the votes against the PT – all while Lula defeated Alckmin in the state, indicating a very strong ‘Lula-Aécio’ vote-splitting campaign, which Aécio tolerated much to the national PSDB’s displeasure. In Rio Grande do Sul, the PT’s Olivío Dutra – one of the party’s founders and the first PT mayor of Porto Alegre (1989-1992) – was unable to regain the office he lost in 2002, losing in the second round to Yeda Crusius (PSDB). In Rio de Janeiro, PMDB senator Sérgio Cabral was easily elected in the second round against right-wing candidate Denise Frossard (PPS). At the time, Cabral was supported by former governor Anthony Garotinho (a party-hopper, who was also PMDB back then) and his wife, outgoing governor Rosinha Garotinho. Garotinho, an evangelical Christian and former ally of Leonel Brizola, is a classic (but clownish) populist who is popular with poorer voters because of his pro-poor policies (meals and hotel nights at the symbolic price of R$1) but disliked by others for his thinly-veiled religious proselytizing and corruption (vote buying, illegal campaign funding). Garotinho, then in the PSB, had run for President in 2002 and placed third with 18% thanks to strong evangelical support. He had unsuccessfully tried to receive the PMDB’s nomination for President in 2006, but a short-lived ‘electoral verticalization’ rule in place at the time which forced parties to have the same alliances at all levels led the PMDB to remain neutral to retain its state-by-state alliances. Although Garotinho had (controversially) endorsed Alckmin in the runoff, Lula supported Cabral.
In Pernambuco, Eduardo Campos (PSB), the grandson of Miguel Arraes and the Minister of Science and Technology (2004-2005), was elected governor in the second round, winning 65.4% against 34.6% for incumbent governor Mendonça Filho (PFL), who had replaced powerful right-wing governor Jarbas Vasconcelos (PMDB) in March 2006. In the first round, the PT’s favourite – health minister Humberto Costa (who had been defeated by Jarbas Vasconcelos in 2002), was defeated, placing a close third. In Maranhão, Roseana Sarney (PFL but pro-Lula) – José Sarney’s daughter – was narrowly defeated in the second round by Jackson Lago (PDT), 48.2% to 51.8%, marking one of the first defeats of the Sarney clan in its own backyard in some 40 years. However, since Lago was soon embroiled in a corruption sting by the federal police, the TSE invalidated all votes cast in his favour in 2009 and Roseana Sarney was proclaimed elected in his stead. In Bahia, the hitherto hegemonic ‘carlist’ machine of ACM (which had ruled without interruption since 1989) suffered an historic – and unexpected – defeat when Jaques Wagner (PT), who had been minister of institutional relations under Lula, defeated incumbent governor Paulo Souto (PFL) in the first round (52.9% to 43%; Souto had led in all polls). In Ceará, incumbent governor Lúcio Alcântara (PSDB) was defeated in a landslide by Cid Gomes (PSB), the brother of Ciro Gomes.
The 2010 elections came at the peak of Lula’s popularity – the outgoing term-limited President had approval ratings over 80% (the highest for any Brazilian President), the economy was performing very well after recovering from a short economic crisis and Lula’s social programs were widely hailed as great successes and best-practices in reducing poverty. Lula handpicked his successor, choosing Dilma Rousseff, who had been Minister of the Casa Civil (Chief of Staff) since Dirceu’s resignation in 2005, and Minister of Mines and Energy prior to that. Dilma, as she is widely referred to in Brazil, was born in a middle-class family in Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais) to a Bulgarian father and Brazilian mother in 1947. She was politicized as a student around the time of the 1964 military coup, and joined a non-communist far-left organization and opted for armed resistance (in the Comando de Libertação Nacional and then in VAR-Palmares) although she largely took an underground leadership rather than guerrilla role. As a member of VAR-Palmares, Dilma may have participated in that group’s most famous action – a raid on the safe of Ademar de Barros, an infamously corrupt populist former governor of São Paulo. Dilma was arrested in 1970 and tortured for 22 days, and was finally released from prison in 1972. She never returned to underground resistance, instead opting for non-electoral political activism by way of think-tanks linked to the MDB in Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul). In 1979, Dilma and her husband joined Leonel Brizola’s PDT – her husband was a PDT state deputy from 1982 to 1990 and a two-time unsuccessful mayoral candidate for the PDT in Porto Alegre, losing twice to the PT. Dilma herself never held elected office, serving as a technocratic cabinet member in a municipal administration in Porto Alegre (1985-1988) and then twice as secretary of mines and energy in the state government of Rio Grande do Sul (1993-1994, 1999-2002). Dilma broke with the PDT and joined the PT in 2001, after the short-lived PT-PDT alliance in the state fell apart during the 2000 municipal elections.
Her expertise on energy issues recognized – as well as her pragmatic relations with private businesses – she was appointed Minister of Mines and Energy in Lula’s cabinet. As minister, Dilma respected (and even expanded) all existing contracts with private firms, and her style received praise from the business sector. However, Dilma’s projects to expand the Brazilian electricity infrastructure to prevent another energy crisis often clashed with environment minister Marina Silva’s concern for such projects’ ecological footprints. As minister, she was also responsible for the development of the Luz para Todos (light for all) project, which aimed at providing free access to electricity for poor rural regions. In 2005, after José Dirceu’s resignation, Lula surprised many by appointing Dilma to replace him as his Chief of Staff.
Dilma’s candidacy for the PT as Lula’s preferred successor was in the works as early as 2008 but was only officially announced in June 2010. Dilma’s candidacy was supported by a broad coalition including the PMDB (which provided Dilma’s running-mate, the president of the Chamber of Deputies Michel Temer), PDT, PCdoB, PSB (which withdrew the early candidacy of Ciro Gomes, who only begrudgingly endorsed Dilma after the first round), PRB, the new Republic Party (Partido da República, PR) and three smaller parties including the Social Christian Party (Partido Social Cristão, PSC). The PR, a venal and slimy populist assemblage of various opportunistic politicians, had been founded in 2006 by the merger of the old PL with the remnants of the far-right populist/nationalist PRONA, whose popular and charismatic leader Enéas Carneiro died in 2007.
The main opposition candidate was José Serra, who had served as governor of São Paulo since 2007 and was leaving office with fairly high approval ratings. Serra was supported by the PSDB, DEM, PPS, PTB and two smaller parties.
Marina Silva, who had served as Lula’s environment minister from 2003 to 2008 and had been a member of the PT for over two decades, had quit the PT in 2009, a year after she left cabinet in disagreement with the government’s environmental policies. As noted above, while she was environment minister, she clashed several times with Dilma over environmental policies and conservation. While Lula tried hard to straddle both sides in the environmental protection/economic development debate, some of his policies – such as the São Francisco river diversion project, the push of agribusiness in the rainforest regions and road construction in the rainforest – were criticized by environmentalists, while those leading those projects criticized Marina for delays in the issuing of permits. In 2009, Marina – who had been a PT senator from the Amazonian state of Acre since 1995 – left the PT, which she had joined in 1986, and joined the Green Party (Partido Verde, PV). The Greens had been part of Lula’s coalition in 2002, but left the government in 2005 over environmental policy differences (but Gilberto Gil, the famous Green-aligned singer who was Lula’s culture minister, stayed in). The PV has tended to be one of the more ideologically consistent and principled minor parties, although the PV has been divided between those friendlier to the PT and those more aligned with the PSDB-led right-wing opposition. Fernando Gabeira, a writer famous for his participation in the 1969 kidnapping of the US ambassador served as a PV federal deputy from Rio de Janeiro from 1995 to 2011 (with a brief switch to the PT in 2002-2003) and came very close to becoming mayor of Rio in 2008, and in recent years he has favoured alliances with the right. On the other hand, Sarney Filho – José Sarney’s son and PV federal deputy – began his career in ARENA/PDS and nowadays supports alliances with the PT. Marina became the PV’s candidate, without any other allies.
Marina is an evangelical Christian since 1997, and has some controversial socially conservative views (which are very out of the mainstream for a Green politician) – she is pro-life, opposes same-sex marriage, stem cell research, drug legalization and expressed sympathy for creationist views.
The candidates differed little on issues such as monetary and fiscal policy (both Serra and Dilma supporting the existing macroeconomic framework and orthodox policies), while clashing on questions such as the role of the state in the economy and foreign policy.
Dilma’s support, which was as low at 3% in 2008, shot up instantly as Lula started actively campaigning for her as his anointed successor in May 2010. With the beginning of free electoral programming in August 2010, Dilma had an unassailable lead over Serra’s faltering campaign and was set to win by the first round until the last week as Marina rapidly gained in the polls (8-10% since the beginning of the year, she began gaining in the last stretch). In the first round, Dilma underperformed and won 46.9%, while both Serra and Marina overperformed their polling: Serra won 32.6% and Marina came out as the real winner, with 19.3%. Marina managed to build an unusual composite coalition with middle-class socially liberal urban bobo voters and conservative evangelical voters.
Serra managed to build a stronger campaign in the runoff, while Dilma faced a wave of attacks from Serra concerning her inexperience and from religious leaders who alleged that she was personally pro-choice (she clarified that she would not touch Brazil’s restrictive abortion laws). Nevertheless, Dilma was handily elected, with 56% of the vote.
Dilma’s coalition won a three-fifths majority in the Chamber and the Senate, with the PT replacing the PMDB as the largest party in the lower house. On the right, the PSDB, PPS and especially DEM all suffered substantial loses in Congress. The most voted candidate for the Chamber in the county was Tiririca (PR), a professional clown and singer-songwriter, who basically ran a protest joke campaign and managed 1.348 million votes (the second-highest all-time number of votes for a candidate, after PRONA’s Enéas Carneiro in 2002). Upon his election, he faced serious questions about his literacy and was forced to pass a literacy test. His support, plus that of Anthony Garotinho (also from the PR, and the second-most voted candidate in Brazil), allowed the PR to win 41 seat, making it the fifth largest party in the Chamber.
In Minas Gerais’ senate race, term-limited governor Aécio Neves (PSDB) and former President Itamar Franco (PPS) were elected to the Senate. In the gubernatorial contest in MG, Aécio’s successor Antônio Anastasia was elected to a full term with over 62% in the first round. In São Paulo, in an amusing game of musical-chairs, Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB) was elected to succeed Serra as governor, with 50.6% in the first round. Aloysio Nunes (PSDB), a former federal deputy and justice minister under FHC, was elected to the first seat in the Senate with a surprisingly massive vote (he broke the existing record for the highest number of votes for any senatorial candidate in Brazil); the second seat went to Marta Suplicy (PT), a former mayor of São Paulo (2000-2004) but her co-candidate and presumed favourite, singer and TV star Netinho de Paula (PCdoB), was narrowly defeated after a story of domestic assault. In Rio de Janeiro, incumbent PMDB governor Sérgio Cabral was reelected with two-thirds of the vote against 20.7% for right-wing candidate Fernando Gabeira (PV). Lindberg Farias (PT), a former student leader and key player in the 1992 caras-pintadas movement for Collor’s impeachment, was elected to the Senate with the most votes while incumbent Senator Marcelo Crivella (PRB), a UCKG bishop and gospel singer, was reelected. In Rio Grande do Sul, PSDB governor Yeda Crusius’ administration became a trainwreck before it even began in 2007 (broken promises, corruption allegations, coalition infighting) so she was handily defeated (18.4% and third) while Tarso Genro (PT), was elected in the first round. In the DF, the DEM governor elected in 2006 – José Arruda – had been arrested while in office and later impeached after a vast corruption scandal (the mensalão do DEM). Former federal deputy Agnelo Queiroz (PT), hardly cleaner himself, was elected in the runoff with 66% of the votes against the wife of another corrupt former governor Joaquim Roriz (PSC).
In the Nordeste, the old right-wing barons suffered some major defeats. In Bahia, PT governor Jaques Wagner was reelected in a landslide (63.4%) despite having broken with the PMDB. In Pernambuco, governor Eduardo Campos (PSB) was one of the most popular governors in the country, so he was reelected with a phenomenal 82.8% against Jarbas Vasconcelos. In the senatorial contest, veteran PFL/DEM senator and former Vice President Marco Maciel was defeated in a landslide, with both seats going to the left (including one to the PT’s Humberto Costa). In Ceará, in what was perhaps one of the most unexpected result, popular PSDB senator Tasso Jereissati was defeated after Lula campaigned strongly against him. In Alagoas, incumbent governor Teo Vilela Filho (PSDB) was ultimately narrowly reelected in the second round of an exciting gubernatorial race which saw a fierce first round battle with senator/impeached President Collor (PTB) and Collor’s nemesis, former two-term governor Ronaldo Lessa (PDT). Collor was narrowly defeated by Lessa for second place in the first round (28.8% to 29.2%, with 39.6% for the incumbent), but despite an unholy alliance with Collor, Lessa was defeated in the second round. In the senatorial contest, incumbent senator Renan Calheiros (PMDB) had no problems with reelection, despite a major scandal in 2007 (Renangate: a business was accused of making payments to Renan’s ex-mistress, with whom he had an illegitimate daughter). He had narrowly survived an impeachment vote following that scandal. In Maranhão, despite another wave of corruption allegations hitting the Sarney clan (José Sarney was by then back as President of the Senate), governor Roseana Sarney (PMDB) was reelected in the first round.
Dilma’s presidency
Upon her election, Dilma – like Lula in 2002 – reiterated her commitment to follow Lula’s macroeconomic policy. Alexandre Tombini, another supporter of low-inflation policies, replaced Meirelles as President of the Central Bank, while Guido Mantega – a more ‘developmentalist’ petista, stayed on as finance minister (a post he has held since 2006).
Dilma’s cabinet was the product of a tricky balancing act, in which she needed to please every part of her broad coalition. Most ministerial portfolios went to the PT – including key ones such as finance, justice, education, health and industry – but the PT’s allies were rewarded with some portfolios. The PMDB, for example, received the Ministry of Social Security, the ministry with the highest operating budget. The PMDB, however, was disappointed with the meager clutch of ministries awarded to them. The PR received transportation, the PCdoB retained sports, the PDT got labour and the PRB received fisheries and aquaculture. These smaller parties, as it turned out, came to feel that they ‘owned’ these ministries and treated them as their private property. The President also has over 25,000 jobs in boards, agencies, state-owned firms and public institutions in her gift – although the government has insisted that these jobs largely go to professional civil servants, the truth is that a lot of these jobs are patronage posts used to reward allies. Antonio Palocci, dismissed as finance minister in 2006 following a scandal, returned to a highly powerful position as Dilma’s Chief of Staff (Minister of the Casa Civil)
After the booming economy in the last year(s) of Lula’s term, the economy was clearly overheating and Brazil’s structural economic problems became clearer. In 2011, the economy grew by only 2.7%, the slowest g