Neves Win in Brazil Would End Alliances Built by Lula

Charlie Devereux and Anatoly Kurmanaev – Bloomberg, 10/22/2014

The election of Aecio Neves as Brazil’s president would end a 12-year alliance uniting leaders from Venezuela to Boliviaon regional development and state intervention in the economy.

Neves, who came from behind to make the second-round vote on Oct. 26 against President Dilma Rousseff, has pledged to restore investor confidence in the economy, end “ideological” political alliances and negotiate new trade deals with or without the Mercosur trade bloc Brazil founded with Argentina in 1991. Polls show the two statistically tied.

Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, once a union leader who lost national elections three times before taking office in 2003, brokered deals and soothed tensions with leaders including Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner and Bolivia’s Evo Morales. Together, they promoted regional bodies such as Mercosur and the Union of South American Nations, while Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia created the Pacific Alliance, a trade bloc designed to boost ties with Asia.

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Brazil’s Rousseff on the offensive a week from runoff vote

Anthony Boadle – Reuters, 10/19/2014

Opposition candidate Aecio Neves is heading into the final week of Brazil’s presidential race with a razor-thin lead in polls, but it’s the incumbent Dilma Rousseff who appears to be gaining momentum in the homestretch.

After a sudden surge before and after the first-round vote on Oct. 5, Neves is struggling to retain the momentum that gave him a slight advantage in recent polling.

He leads Rousseff by 2 percentage points in the most closely watched opinion polls, within their margin of error. Recent surveys show that support may have peaked for Neves, an investor favorite, and his disapproval numbers are rising amid a barrage of attacks by the Rousseff campaign.

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Kickback Allegations Ensnare Brazil’s Presidential Campaign

Will Connors, Luciana Magalhaes and Jeffrey Lewis – The Wall Street Journal, 09/07/2014

Leading opposition presidential candidate Marina Silva was forced on Sunday to confront a scandal involving Brazil’s biggest company that already tarnished the country’s president and has added another level of complexity to October presidential elections.

A former executive of state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA PETR4.BR -4.91% alleged that dozens of prominent Brazilian politicians—including Ms. Silva’s former running mate Eduardo Campos —took part in a kickback scheme for Petrobras contracts, according to a story published Saturday by a Brazilian newsweekly.

Ms. Silva, a former environment minister who replaced Mr. Campos as the socialist party candidate after his death last month in a plane crash, currently leads incumbent Dilma Rousseff in the polls and has made clean government one of her main selling points.

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Marina’s rise, not unforeseen, changed the outlook of Brazil’s October presidential elections

Paulo Sotero, 09/02/2014

With one month left in Brazil’s presidential and general election campaign, environmental leader Marina Silva emerged as the opposition’s strongest challenger to President Dilma Rousseff and to the continuation of the twelve-year rule of the Workers’ Party. A Datafolha poll released Saturday, August 30, showed Silva, known as Marina, tied with Rousseff in the first round of votes on October 5^th and ten points ahead in the runoff scheduled for October 26^th.

The phenomenal rise of the former senator and Environmental Minister from a frustrated politician without party affiliation as of late last year to a leading candidate started, unpredictably, with the tragic death of presidential candidate Eduardo Campos. Campos, a popular former governor whom Marina joined after a failed attempt to create her own political party, died in an airplane crash on August 13^th.

The potential success of Marina’s political career was not, however, unforeseen. She received an impressive 20% of votes in 2010, when she first ran for president as candidate of the small Green Party, after leaving the Workers’ Party. More recently, political analysts viewed Marina as the principal political beneficiary of massive street protests that erupted in June 2013 in dozens of Brazilian cities, to the surprise of the government, the opposition and the media.

Brazil’s Silva looks presidential, but not a shoo-in

Brian Winter – Reuters, 09/01/2014

Popular environmentalist Marina Silva looks capable of winning Brazil’s presidential election in October but a major campaign gaffe and mounting attacks from other candidates and the media suggest the race is still wide open.

Polls have shown Silva with a lead of about 10 percentage points over President Dilma Rousseff if the Oct. 5 election goes to a runoff, as seems likely. Silva’s meteoric rise has led Brazilian stocks to rally 10 percent in the last three weeks on hopes she would be more business-friendly than Rousseff and help stir a stagnant economy.

In the last week, Silva has successfully begun to address some of the doubts voters have about her – namely, whether she has the personal gravitas and organizational support to govern this continent-sized nation of 200 million people.

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Will Brazil elect Marina Silva as the world’s first Green president?

Jonathan Watts – The Guardian, 08/30/2014

It started with the national anthem and ended with a rap. In between came a poignant minute’s silence, politicised football chants and a call to action by the woman tipped to become the first Green national leader on the planet.

The unveiling in São Paulo of Brazilian presidential candidate Marina Silva’s platform for government on Friday was a sometimes bizarre mix of tradition and modernity, conservatism and radicalism, doubt and hope: but for many of those present, it highlighted the very real prospect of an environmentalist taking the reins of a major country.

In a dramatic election that has at times seemed scripted by a telenovelawriter, Silva has tripled her coalition’s poll ratings in the two weeks since she took over from her predecessor and running mate, Eduardo Campos, who was killed in a plane crash. Following a strong performance in the first TV debate between candidates, polls suggest she will come second in the first-round vote on 5 October and then beat the incumbent, Dilma Rousseff, in the runoff three weeks later.

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Brazilian President Criticizes Marina Silva’s Political Platform

TeleSUR – 09/01/2014

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff claims that Marina Silva’s industrial policies will negatively impact employment. During a press conference at the Brazilian presidential palace, President Dilma Rousseff criticized the policies of her opponent Marina Silva on Sunday leading up to the presidential elections in October, claiming that Silva’s political platform would greatly hurt the country’s domestic industrial sector and could potentially lead to widespread unemployment.

“After reviewing her political proposals, I am very concerned particularly with regards to the creation of employment and industrial policy,” Rousseff said.

In particular, Rousseff questioned her presidential candidate rival’s proposal with regards to providing fiscal incentives to certain industrial sectors, stating that such measures “are only effective in particular cases not as general rule of thumb.”

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Brazil’s Marina Silva Reverses on LGBT Rights Overnight

Geoffrey Ramsey – The Pan-American Post, 09/01/2014

Marina Silva’s odds of winning Brazil’s presidential election in October are looking better and better. As the AP notes, Friday brought some bad news for President Dilma Rousseff’s re-election campaign in the form of a one-two punch: not only is the economy now officially in a recession, but polls show support for Silva is continuing to rise.

According to the latest Datafolha survey, support for Silva increased by 13 points in two weeks, with the poll showing both her and Rousseff tied in the first round with 34 percent of the vote. In a second-round matchup, however, Datafolha found that Silva would beat the president by ten points, 50 to 40 percent.

Also on Friday, Silva released her official electoral platform, outlining her position on a range of issues in a 244-page document. The program contains a number of interesting proposals, like putting an end to re-election and gradually increasing healthcare spending to 10 percent of GDP. On economic issues, Silva promised to lower the country’s tax burden and give more autonomy to Brazil’s central bank, which has earned her support among the business community.

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Market Reduces Brazil Growth Forecast After Weak 2Q

Kenneth Rapoza – Forbes, 09/01/2014

Brazil’s back-to-back economic contraction in the first and second quarters now has the nation’s top banks reducing their year-ending GDP forecast to a whopping 0.52%. This is the 14th consecutive week that economists reduced their forecasts for Brazil’s economy.

Last week, the Central Bank’s Focus survey had GDP growth ending 2014 at 0.7%. The survey comes out every Monday.

The decline comes on the heels of a poor showing in the second quarter. The economy contracted 0.6% from the first quarter, which had also contracted, putting Brazil in a technical recession. Compared with the second quarter of 2013, Brazil’s GDP slipped 0.9%.

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Recession puts brake on Brazil’s once-booming car industry

Joe Leahy – Financial Times, 08/31/2014

Workers in Brazil’s automotive industry have become accustomed to seeing their sector break new records, with Latin America’s biggest country becoming the fourth largest car producer in the world over the past decade.

But last week, 930 employees at General Motors’ plant in São José dos Campos near São Paulo were forced to accept a five-month “lay-off” or suspension to avoid outright dismissals.

The country’s weak economy, which was revealed on Friday to have slipped into a technical recession in the second quarter, is undermining the industry, leading it to report its first annual fall in car sales in a decade last year – a trend that has continued into 2014.

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