Paulo Rabello de Castro, a University of Chicago-trained economist and one of Brazil's wittiest thinkers, has called the country's presidential elections next month a choice between "more of the same" and "the same without more."
This is light years away from the strong emotions presidential elections usually incite in developing countries.
Rabello de Castro's irony is apt, for it is difficult to say which candidate represents "more of the same": President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is running for re-election and is the favorite according to the polls, or former Sao Paulo governor Geraldo Alckmin, of the PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party, which governed Brazil for eight years before Lula, with Fernando Henrique Cardoso as president).
Indeed, the distinction is so difficult that in a recent interview, Cardoso himself said that Lula's Workers' Party (PT) project is the PSDB's project. He added: "Perhaps there is not another one. History does not always produce a new project."
Cardoso is right. Except for barely practical political rhetoric from leaders like President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and President Evo Morales in Bolivia, there is nothing new on offer in the world's electoral marketplace.
In other words, there is no longer a battle between different projects in any modern country, no left-right confrontation (with their nuances) that might raise voters' emotions. Here, Brazil is no different than the UK, Spain or Uruguay. Indeed, Brazil's upcoming election is like a soccer match between big teams, where supporters of one candidate and the other are solely distinguished by the colors of their shirts, since the strongest teams accept the rules of the game and even tactics are similar.
According to the socialist sociologist Francisco de Oliveira, the coldness of the electoral landscape is closely related to the "irrelevance" of politics due to its "financiarization."
In other words, the boundaries of government action have narrowed tremendously in the face of strong financial markets, with their power to destabilize any government act deemed inconvenient.
Is this lack of emotion about politics, this absence of confrontation between different projects, good or bad? For some analysts, it is good, because it reveals a nation's political maturity. In the case of Brazil, it means that the people are no longer willing to accept or vote for the heterodox political and economic adventures that characterized the 1980s and early 1990s.
The problem is that this assumed maturity, whether real or not, is happening while the basic problems of the country remain unsolved. Indeed, for at least 25 years Brazil has not been able to achieve rapid economic growth. This is the sine qua non for beginning to face and correct intense and deeply rooted problems, such as redressing the country's poverty, obscene distribution of income, the vast educational shortages, a precarious health system, a devastated infrastructure caused by long years of insufficient investment and the rest of a long list of other miseries typical of underdevelopment.
De Castro argues that "the country lacks an institutional model or a productive order that comes to terms with fast growth."
Concerning the process of de Oliveira "financiarization " of politics, there is an interesting fact to take into account: country risk reached its lowest level, since the creation of the index in 1994, on Wednesday Aug. 9, precisely in the sequence of what Brazilian media called "the third wave of attacks" by a criminal group, the PCC (First Command of the Capital), which burned buses, destroyed banking agencies, placed bombs in public buildings (even the headquarters of the Sao Paulo's Public Ministry of State and the police agency in charge of repressing organized crime).
This means that the financial world measures risk according to its own interests. If a country is not slow in paying back its debts and applies those policies considered "healthy" by the markets, bingo, country risk is low. For the general population, particularly the middle class and/or low-resource people, the risks posed by going out into the street on that same day may be extremely high, but this does not affect financial estimations.
So why, under these circumstances, is Lula close to re-election? Simply put: he works on both sides of the counter. Between January 2003 (when his administration began) and this past June, Lula's administration assigned 530 billion reales (US$242.7 billion) to repay the holders of government bonds, whereas he devoted 30 billion reales to a program called "Bolsa-Familia" that distributes money directly to poor families.
This does not seem to be the best way to bring about a true redistribution of income, but has been enough to achieve two objectives: it keeps domestic and foreign investors satisfied.
In the electoral campaign of 2002, both domestic and external investors bet heavily against the Brazilian currency, for fear of Lula, a candidate who seemed to be radical. This strategy also wins the votes of the poorest segments of society, who make up the majority of Brazil's electorate and receive very little, but see the subsidies as "better than nothing." And the poor make up the majority of Brazil's electorate.
Everything indicates that this will be enough for Lula to win re-election. But can this political game be replayed indefinitely?
Clovis Rossi is a columnist at Folha de S. Paulo.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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