“ O Brasil não é para principiantes”

Last Friday, I was in Ferrara, Italy, for the Internazionale Festival, where I attended a talk about the Brazilian presidential elections, whose title was “Brazil – The giant at the polls”. The panel was made of three Brazilian journalists: Eliane Brum from Epoca, Denise Paraná, author of Lula’s biography and director of his bio-pic, and Paulo Sotero, who used to write for Estado de Sao Paulo and now works for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

If it hadn’t been for him, the whole debate could have just been a celebration of the Lula myth, that is “the trade unionist who has become one of the most well-known politicians on earth, both in diplomatic circles and with ordinary citizens”.

The first intervention, by Eliane Brum, was an interesting portray of the rise of the Brazilian lower middle class from a past of deprivation to a present of relative prosperity: freedom from hunger, with the welcome addition of consumer electronics like Pcs and flat-screen TV sets. The rise of the so-called C class, which amounts to 50.5% of the population of one of the most unequal societies the world knows. Though she did say that the investment in education – 4% of the GDP-  by the Lula government didn’t match the expectations people had, as well as the electoral promises he made in 2002, the account was informative to understand how come the Brazilian president enjoys one of the highest approval rates of the country’s democratic history. According to her, the fact that Lula anointed Dilma Roussef as successor was a reason for her forthcoming success: though the family in her case study didn’t like her, they would vote for her to stay faithful to Lula’s vision of a more equal Brazil.

Denise Pará’s intervention was pure celebration of the Lula myth: one that did not add anything new to his public persona, dwelling in anecdotes, and not addressing at all the issue of the giant going to the polls 48 hours later. The fact that she directed a movie that was also criticized for being a propaganda tool during election year made me sceptical. It was interesting to see though that the narrative struck a chord with the audience: Brazilians and Italians surely communicate very well, and a left-leaning audience can buy into this icon easily.

Paulo Sotero’s account was very balanced, and it helped contextualize the political history of the country: from the dark years of dictatorship to the presidencies of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula. He was right also in affirming that, unlike other countries on the rise on the global stage, Brazil is a democracy (ni hao, China), it’s a peaceful place (greetings from Kashmir, India), and although there are corruption issues, it is no less troubled than other European countries (buongiorno, Italy).

He, like many others in the international press, said that the main achievement of  Cardoso – or FHC as Brazilians call the previous president, was to bring financial stability as well as to begin the cash-transfer scheme, Fome Zero, which continued by Lula (Bolsa Familia) has helped lifting 12 million families out of poverty. FHC was a Marxist philosopher who brought Brazil to the global marketplace, Lula is a trade unionist, whose leftist credentials initially were met with skepticism from the markets, who has overseen a steady  economic growth during his second term.

The main thing to bear in mind, as Sotero said, is that many people who once were poor have now become small consumers. The key question for whoever comes next will be to transform those small consumers in full citizens, with access to quality public services like health and education, areas that are still under-resourced.

As for the elections, he, like The Economist in a recent piece,highlighted that Brazilians at the polls will vote pragmatically, and not because of an ideological background.

Even more so when in the campaign, the two main contenders, Dilma Rousseff from the ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) and José Serra, of the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB) have not had competing views on issues like the economy, and they belong to the left-end of the spectrum.

In the debate, Sotero said that many surveys predicted a victory of Ms.Rousseff at the first round. And that’s where the interesting story starts to develop, because last Sunday’s polls gave an unexpected picture. Dilma got 46.9% of the vote, Serra obtained 32.6%, while the outsider, Marina Silva from the Partido Verde (PV) got 19.2%. Silva was a former Minister for the Environment in the Lula administration from 2003 to 2008, who resigned because of disagreements with other cabinet members about economic development and its impact on the rainforest.

According to prior surveys, as well as estimates by pundits, Silva would have got around 10% of the vote. This was a real breakthrough, putting the environmental question and sustainable development at the heart of the election: a new narrative arguing for preservation of natural resources, as opposed to more economic success.

The PV has not announced yet whether it will support the PT or the PSDB; it could also stay neutral. Ideologically, some in the left-leaning electorate of the green may oppose outright support for the PSDB, but the rifts with the PT are too recent to be forgotten.

The fact that an outsider stormed Brazilian politics just when everybody thought that the elections were going to be won hands-down by Lula’s candidate, demonstrates that the country is not for beginners (O Brasil não é para principiantes), like Jobim used to say. It is a healthy democracy, whose influence will grow more and more in the coming years.