Brazil’s Presidential Election Left Much Unsettled

Brazil’s Presidential Election Left Much Unsettled

Source: http://latinamericannewsdigest.com

The close race that ended with the reelection of President Dilma Rousseff, many observers on both the left and the right believe, points to continuing political struggles over many basic issues.

Fernando Cardim de Carvalho sounded a cautious but somewhat optimistic note in the Buenos Aires Herald. There is no doubt that Rousseff faces a difficult period ahead. The economy has ground to a halt during 2014 and the perspectives for 2015 are not much better. During practically the whole of the first semester, inflation remained near or above the ceiling of 6.5 percent that was set by the government itself. There are high deficits, and much was made during the electoral campaign of corruption cases in the administration and in state enterprises.

But while “the situation is uncomfortable on many fronts” it is “far from catastrophic, no matter how dramatic opposition speeches are.” “Things are far better than in Western Europe, for example, where a second recession is very likely.” Focusing only on the economic challenges, Rousseff’s first task is to try to escape the curse the Brazilian economy has faced since it brought its inflation under control around twenty years ago.

The Brazilian economy has see-sawed, “alternating periods where devalued exchange rates have allowed some industrial expansion at the cost of accelerating inflation with periods of controlled inflation at the cost of industrial stagnation.” President Fernando Cardoso was “imprisoned by this dilemma, as was Lula da Silva” and “Rousseff in her first term” though, “to her credit, realized that the country had to escape the trap but was unsuccessful in finding the way to do so.”

In Página/12 of Buenos Aires Darío Pignotti spoke with Miguel Rossetto, Minister of Agrarian Development and one of the strategists of the president’s campaign. Rossetto insisted that the president has “emerged with enormous legitimacy.” Her next government will expect “hard battles,” but she “came out very strong from this historic election,” even though the media was rightwing and “rabidly partisan, fueled by hatred against the president and against PT.” Even after all the “massive protests” last year, the Brazilian people did not heed the “elite scream” of invective. They continued to value the “extraordinary achievements” of the PT government, giving Brazil “almost full employment,” income distribution through “a raised minimum wage,” and the creation of 21 million jobs.

Now Rousseff’s government will put much effort into “serious political reform,” and look for a way to engage a “mobilized society” to fight the power of money in politics. Rossetto also hinted that a still popular former President Lula will be very “welcome” among her advisors. This will be important since the opposition will be emboldened by having only lost by 3.3%.

As La Tercera of Santiago noted, about 10,000 people marched against Rousseff’s government in São Paulo, protesting her reelection. They hoisted posters with the phrases like “Out PT,” “Dilma Out,” “No to control of the press,” and “Economic and Political Freedom.”

In La Jornada of Mexico City Guillermo Almeyra argued that the PT only achieved a Pyrrhic victory. Despite Former President Lula having thrown all of his political weight behind the reelection campaign of his protégée Dilma Rousseff, the PT barely scraped by, and continued their slide in general elections. Almeyra also argued that it was just a “fight between two sectors of the Brazilian bourgeoisie,” and that both sides have “much in common.”

Indeed, this was “no victory for the left.” The PT government emerged from the election politically weakened and without a firm social base, and many of its popular supporters unhappy. “Lula and Dilma have used handouts to effectively pull a million people out of the extreme poverty, but it has made them dependent on the bags of food and welfare state subsidies, and not politically educated in a very basic sense about a clash of the rich against the poor.”

The Brazilian popular classes have been “exploited” and “prevented from being politically independent and creators of their own destiny.” And this at a moment when the “global crisis now leaves no room for half measures nor rotten compromises. The distributionist and paternalistic policy in Brazil and in other countries with progressive governments is finished.”

And in Correio da Cidadania of São Paulo Valeria Nader and Gabriel Brito interviewed economist Reinaldo Gonçalves who believes that the “dichotomy between the PT and PSDB” is false, and the idea that a victory by the PSDB would have “deepened” Brazil’s dive into “neoliberalism” is an “ideological falsehood.” Their general economic policies are “exactly the same,” and represent a model that is “rotting” Brazil’s economic, social, political, and institutional structures.

ENDS

© Scoop Media