As Brazil’s influence expands, so does a campaign strategist’s success

Simon Romero – The New York Times, 04/05/2013

For decades, presidential elections in Latin America have often involved that well-known fixture in the cable news landscape of the United States: the American political consultant.

Back in the 1970s, David Sawyer, a pioneer in the field, worked for the Venezuelan candidate Lorenzo Fernández. (He was trounced.) James Carville, the former Clinton adviser and now media celebrity, worked with Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s successful 1994 campaign for president in Brazil, and Tad Devine, Al Gore’s strategist, helped Manuel Zelaya win Honduras’s presidential election in 2005.

But in a development reflecting the waning clout of one powerful nation in the hemisphere and the rising influence of another, Brazilian political consultants have begun to compete handily with their American counterparts, orchestrating campaigns throughout Latin America and beyond. No one exemplifies this shift in the region’s political winds quite like João Santana.

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Brazil to investigate ex-president Lula in vote-buying scandal

Reuters, 04/06/2013

A Brazilian federal prosecutor has opened an investigation into allegations that former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was involved in a vote-buying scheme in Congress that led to the conviction of close aides for corruption.

The federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement late on Friday it asked the federal police to probe accusations of a businessman at the centre of the corruption case, Marcos Valerio, who alleged that Lula not only knew about the illegal scheme but received money from it.

Lula has repeatedly denied the allegations that he knew of the vote-buying scandal known as the “mensalão,” under which operatives from the ruling Workers’ Party paid lawmakers in Congress to back the government’s legislative agenda. The scandal, which erupted in 2005, almost brought down Lula’s government at the time and led to the biggest political corruption trial in Brazilian history.

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Analysis: Brazil’s next president will be…

Gabriel Elizondo – Al Jazeera, 02/25/2013

There’s a case to be made that no country has lived through as much radical and fundamental positive change in the past 10 years as Brazil.

There has also been an evolution – of sorts – in what Brazilians want and need out of their president.

A decade ago Brazil was a country looking for a charismatic, larger-than-life figure who would lift millions from poverty, take the country to new economic heights, and rattle the cages of the world to take notice of the South American giant.

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Unstoppable?

The Economist, 02/16/2013

“BRAZILIANS! You’ve just been taken for fools!” So wrote the organisers of an online petition calling for the impeachment of Renan Calheiros, who was elected president of Brazil’s Senate on February 1st. And on February 11th, though Carnival was in full swing, the petition notched up more than 1.36m signatures, 1% of the electorate. That gives its backers the right to present their demand to Congress, though they will have to wait until after February 19th to do so: whereas other Brazilians get three days off for Carnival, lawmakers enjoy two full weeks.

Mr Calheiros, a wheeler-dealer of the sort who excels in Brazil’s fragmented coalition politics, was president of the Senate from 2005 to 2007. But he resigned after allegations that a lobbyist had paid maintenance on his behalf to a lover with whom he had had a child, and that he then faked receipts for the sale of cattle to try to prove that he could have afforded to pay her himself. He denies all wrongdoing and has since stayed active in politics, but only behind the scenes. His allies in the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), Brazil’s largest, evidently judged it was time for him to return to centre-stage.

The president of Brazil’s Senate has the power to sideline his enemies’ projects and deny them opportunities for patronage. That is why 56 senators voted for Mr Calheiros and only 18 against—even though Aécio Neves and Eduardo Campos, two probable opposition presidential candidates in 2014, had urged their parties to vote for a hastily chosen alternative. Dilma Rousseff, the president, has taken a hard line in the past by sacking ministers facing allegations of corruption. And her Workers’ Party is angry about what it sees as bias: last year’s trial of the mensalão (big monthly stipend) vote-buying scandal saw many of its members handed unexpectedly harsh sentences. But realpolitik prevailed. With the PMDB behind Mr Calheiros, Ms Rousseff accepted his candidacy and telephoned to congratulate him when he won.

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Rousseff targets 2013 growth revival as Brazil election looms

David Biller, Raymond Colitt – Bloomberg, 01/21/2013

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff, at the midpoint of her term, faces a pivotal year as she seeks to revive economic growth in preparation for an election run in October 2014.

With the economy advancing at a quarter of the pace she targeted shortly after taking office, her administration has enacted more than two stimulus measures a month in the past year. If the world’s biggest emerging market after China doesn’t rebound soon, Rousseff, 65, may face an electoral battle even though she currently enjoys a record approval rating.

The flagging economy threatens her prospects and has prompted the biggest opposition party to name its likely candidate, said Andre Cesar, director at consulting firmProspectiva. Gross domestic product grew in the first half of Rousseff’s term at an average annual rate of 1.87 percent, the slowest two-year pace since 1998-99.

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Erosion of regulatory agencies becoming apparent

The Economist, 12/23/2012

Following dismal GDP figures for the third quarter, driven by the fifth consecutive contraction in investment, the question of what is hampering investment in Brazil has come to the forefront of the policy debate as its performance will be one of the key aspects shaping the country’s economic outlook in 2013 and beyond. The Economist Intelligence Unit has recently revised down its estimates for GDP growth for 2012 (to 1%) and 2013 (to 3.5%), on the back of Brazil’s lacklustre performance so far this year and a weaker outlook for both private and public investment.

There are several theories about the reasons for the fall in private investment in Brazil. Prominent among these are the structural problems facing the productive sector, such as the lack of infrastructure; the high burden of the tax system; costly and relatively unskilled labour, coupled with rigid labour legislation; and an overvalued exchange rate in recent years (although this has eased somewhat since March), with imported goods supplying a greater share of consumer demand than locally produced goods. There is also a growing view that the government’s hyperactivity—it has implemented a spate of apparently unrelated stimulus measures since mid-2011 (many of which have been announced shortly after the publication of disappointing data)—is increasing uncertainty and causing companies to hold off on their investment plans. Another factor is that Brazil’s macroeconomic policy mix is changing, and this is also creating uncertainty. Despite the authorities’ assertions to the contrary, there is mounting evidence that the exchange-rate regime is moving to a quasi-fix with an adjustable band, rather than the floating regime that has been pursued for over a decade. Uncertainty over exchange-rate policy is problematic as many companies need to import capital goods in order to invest. Last but not least, there are the concerns over the government’s protectionist stance, including the adoption of local-content requirements that affect major exporters such as Embraer, Brazil’s aviation company, which needs to import most of its production inputs.

One often overlooked issue in this list of factors that may have contributed to the recent fall in the investment rate (to below 19% of GDP, from 22% before the 2008 Lehman crisis) is the extent to which Brazil’s institutions have been eroded in the last few years. During the 1990s, the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002) promoted a major overhaul of the economy, not only laying the foundations for macroeconomic stability, but also creating the institutional framework to sustain a favourable business environment following the ambitious privatisation programme undertaken at the time. The creation of regulatory agencies, staffed by technical rather than political appointees, was an important achievement. The appointment of managers and directors with extensive private-sector experience to head major public-sector financial institutions, such as Banco do Brasil, was also a step forward, following Brazil’s previous record of highly politicised public financing decisions, which had led to a series of losses and recapitalisations of the public banks.

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The Brazilian decade

Marc Margolis – Newsweek, 12/30/2012

About 15 years ago, on assignment in Bolivia, I met a pair of local drug-enforcement agents who were kicking back in a hotel bar. The conversation was light and easygoing, until I mentioned I was based in Brazil. “Ah, Braaaazil,” said one of the agents, peacocking for effect. “The land of ‘the biggest in the world.’” I wrote his comment off as Latino envy, that familiar jolt of resentment, which served as the subtext of many conversations about the giant of South America and the neighbors it dwarfed. The comment was also a telling expression of how people viewed the old Brazil, the hemisphere’s large underachiever, a nation that frequently waxed grandiose and then fell short of hype and expectations.

Much has changed in Latin America since then, nowhere more so than in Brazil. Stable, democratic, stylish, and self confident, this $2.5 trillion economy now has some backbone behind its swagger; it still stirs resentment among its neighbors—Brazilians are the new gringos—but not so many jokes these days. Instead, from inflation control to social welfare policies, from the campaign trail to the catwalk, the state of Latin America in 2013, and in years to come, will most likely be shaped by what happens in this restless country of 197 million. Welcome to Latin America’s Brazilian decade.

Brazil, of course, is not the only game in town. Peru leads the hemisphere in economic growth, with GDP set to expand by 6 percent this year, nearly twice the Latin American average. Under the deft leadership of Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia has strengthened trade with China, courted onetime mortal enemy Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, and even resurrected peace talks with guerrilla insurgents, turning the modest Andean nation into a magnet for investment. Chile—the stellar outlier—has practically decoupled from the continent with its established tradition of free-market policies and an aggressive export industry that long ago made the pivot to the Pacifi c. Even Mexico, while bloodied by a six-year, futile drug war, is showing signs of revival with population growth slowing, public spending under control, and a long-awaited boom in manufacturing exports finally kicking in.

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Online freedoms in Brazil endangered by changes to Internet Bill of Rights, says expert

Natalia Mazotte – Journalism in the Americas, 11/13/2012

After the vote was postponed four times because of a lack on consensus, the Internet Bill of Rights, a bill that establishes the rights and obligations of Internet users in Brazil, is back on the floor of the Chamber of Deputies Tuesday, Nov. 13. The latest section to draw fire is a paragraph in article 15 of the bill that states that case of copyright infringement do not require court order to be taken down.

The change was criticized by the Brazilian Internet Association. “A new proposed amendment, with the insertion of the second paragraph that limits the user’s protection against indiscriminate content removal, will surely matter in censorship cases and, for this reason, is absolutely unconstitutional and an affront on digital freedom,” the group said in a statement on its website.

Several organizations in support of the democratization of the media and consumer defense groups sent a letter to Deputy Alessandro Molon, the Bill of Rights rapporteur, who also came out against the amendment to article 15.

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Doha conference: carbon cuts talks must wait, says key negotiator

Jonathan Watts – The Guardian, 11/15/2012

The debate on whether the world needs stronger greenhouse gas cuts to keep the planet from warming by 2C should be deferred until next year, according to Brazil‘s lead negotiator at the upcoming talks in Doha.

Ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo says delegates at Qatar – the most important climate negotiations of the year – should prioritise an extension of the Kyoto protocol and the rules for a longer-term agreement rather than be distracted by the crucial but contentious issue of emissions reductions.

Environmental groups, however, are calling for greater urgency from Brazil, a country that has won plaudits at previous gatherings for leading the search for common ground between wealthy and developing nations.

With the Kyoto protocol set to expire at the end of the year, Figueiredo told the Guardian there is an urgent need to ensure the continuation of a process that has been the foundation of international discussions for more than a decade, despite its shrinking support among the initial signatories.

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Coisa de americano

Paulo Sotero – O Estado de S. Paulo, 11/12/2012

No fim de semana anterior às disputadíssimas eleições que deram o segundo mandato ao presidente Barack Obama, na última terça-feira, cenários de pesadelo preocuparam os analistas da grande imprensa americana. Em meio à polarização política que ameaça a governabilidade do país, e chegou ao paroxismo durante a interminável e caríssima campanha eleitoral deste ano, eles temeram que o pleito terminasse num empate no colégio eleitoral dos 538 chamados grandes eleitores que, constitucionalmente, escolhem o presidente do Estados Unidos. Num dos cenários, Obama e seu desafiante republicano, o ex-governador de Massachusetts Mitt Romney, acabariam com 269 votos cada um. As eleições, nesse caso, seriam decididas pela próxima legislatura do Congresso, a de número 113, que tomará posse no próximo dia 3 de janeiro, como manda a Constituição. A Câmara dos Representantes elegeria o presidente e o Senado, o vice. Como se previa que os republicanos continuariam no mando na Câmara e os democratas manteriam a maioria no Senado, como de fato aconteceu, os deputados elegeriam Romney para a presidência, os senadores confirmariam o vice-presidente Joseph Biden no cargo e a desgastante divisão que sufoca a política americana há quase duas décadas se instalaria na própria Casa Branca.

Outro cenário que preocupou os analistas até tarde na noite do dia 6 foi a inversão dos resultados da eleição popular e do colégio eleitoral. No envenenado ambiente da política americana – no qual narcisistas bilionários como o empresário e personalidade de televisão Donald Trump alimentam a mentira segundo a qual Barack Obama não nasceu nos Estados Unidos e não é, portanto, elegível à Casa Branca -, a inversão certamente ajudaria a alucinada direita republicana a levantar dúvidas sobre a legitimidade do presidente. Ocorreu quatro vezes na história do país, em 1824, 1876, 1888 e no ano 2000. No episódio mais recente, o vice-presidente Albert Gore, democrata, ganhou a votação popular por uma diferença de 543 mil votos num total de mais de 104 milhões. No entanto, o republicano George W. Bush recebeu a maioria dos votos do colégio eleitoral depois de uma controvertida decisão por 5 a 4 dos juízes da Suprema Corte, que lhe deu a vitória na Flórida. Em 18 eleições desde 1824, o vencedor foi eleito sem receber a maioria dos votos das urnas.

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