Dom Phillips
By Dom Phillips
The first round of voting is still a month away. But Marina Silva’s dramatic rise in the polls as she seeks to unseat President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party has shaken Brazil’s political establishment.
“She is something new, like Obama. Something that wasn’t expected. Talking a new language,” said José Moisés, a political science professor at the University of São Paulo. “We are in front of a political phenomenon.”
Silva, 56, who was the environment minister in the Workers Party government of hugely popular president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has become the standard-bearer for the rival Brazilian Socialist Party. Polls show that support for her party has tripled since she was thrust into the race shortly after the August 13 death in a plane crash of the original Socialist candidate.
If this mixed-race activist from deep in the Amazon, who has a radical past in liberation theology, did become president, it would be a major step towards equality in a country still largely run by a privileged, white elite. Yet Silva appears less likely to provoke Western powers than Lula occasionally did. Her party programme highlights ties with China and Latin America, but also says that relations with the United States “need updating” and calls for a “mature, balanced and purposeful dialogue that doesn’t dramatize natural differences between partners with economic interests.”
This week’s polls show Silva and Rousseff each capturing about a third of the vote, with Aécio Neves, from the center-right Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) garnering about 15 percent. In a second-round simulation, the poll by the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics (IBOPE) shows Silva at 46 percent to Rousseff’s 39 percent, giving her victory.
Rousseff had appeared to be a shoo-in for re-election. She was Lula’s handpicked successor. The Workers Party has run Brazil since 2003. During a decade of economic growth, millions of Brazilians rose out of poverty.
Eduardo Campos, the Socialists’ chosen candidate, was in third place, with 9 percent support, according to an earlier IBOPE poll, when he was killed last month. Silva, his running mate, began her campaign in Recife days after 130,000 people attended Campos’s funeral. Winning the presidency would be a remarkable achievement for a woman who grew up in a poor family of Amazon rubber tappers, hoped to become a nun before turning to evangelical Christianity, and learned to read when she was a teenager. Her mother was white, her father is a mix of black and Brazilian Indian ancestry, said Marilia Cesar, who wrote a 2010 biography.
Silva’s growing band of supporters includes residents of Brazilian slums, or favelas, business people who like her party’s “third way” programme, and evangelical Christians, an increasingly powerful demographic in Brazil.
She also attracts young, urban Brazilians who are disillusioned with politics. In research Moisés conducted this year, 82 percent said they did not trust political parties. A run of corruption scandals under Rousseff and Lula have exacerbated the distrust. “She is bringing the dissatisfaction of the Brazilians with the political system to the campaign,” Moisés said. Those sentiments were echoed in the enormous Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro, where Silva and other Socialist politicians campaigned last weekend.
“She is going to fight. Put things in order,” said Maria da Conceição, 54, rounding up her children. “We see sincerity in her.”
Her friend Claudia Mendonça, 42, said she, too, will vote for Silva. “She is determined, she has strength, she has drive,” Mendonça said. “She is not promising the world.” Brazil’s economy officially went into recession in August. Inflation is hovering right at the government’s 6.5 percent ceiling. This hurts Rousseff’s campaign.
It also opens up space for Silva. Her party’s detailed government program was published Aug. 29. Neither the Workers Party nor the PSDB have theirs ready yet.
Proposals in that programme make Silva “our reliable agent of change,” said Tony Volpon, head of emerging markets research for the Americas at Nomura Securities International in New York. These include inflation targets, an independent Central Bank, a free-floating exchange rate and an independent Fiscal Responsibility Council to evaluate public spending.
“She is not only signaling changing policy. She is changing the institutional framework by which policies are made,” Volpon said. Silva wants to rescue Brazil’s ailing ethanol industry and focus more on alternative energy sources. This concerns the oil industry, gearing up production of Brazil’s vast “pre-salt” offshore oil reserves.WP-BLOOMBERG
By Dom Phillips
The first round of voting is still a month away. But Marina Silva’s dramatic rise in the polls as she seeks to unseat President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party has shaken Brazil’s political establishment.
“She is something new, like Obama. Something that wasn’t expected. Talking a new language,” said José Moisés, a political science professor at the University of São Paulo. “We are in front of a political phenomenon.”
Silva, 56, who was the environment minister in the Workers Party government of hugely popular president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has become the standard-bearer for the rival Brazilian Socialist Party. Polls show that support for her party has tripled since she was thrust into the race shortly after the August 13 death in a plane crash of the original Socialist candidate.
If this mixed-race activist from deep in the Amazon, who has a radical past in liberation theology, did become president, it would be a major step towards equality in a country still largely run by a privileged, white elite. Yet Silva appears less likely to provoke Western powers than Lula occasionally did. Her party programme highlights ties with China and Latin America, but also says that relations with the United States “need updating” and calls for a “mature, balanced and purposeful dialogue that doesn’t dramatize natural differences between partners with economic interests.”
This week’s polls show Silva and Rousseff each capturing about a third of the vote, with Aécio Neves, from the center-right Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) garnering about 15 percent. In a second-round simulation, the poll by the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics (IBOPE) shows Silva at 46 percent to Rousseff’s 39 percent, giving her victory.
Rousseff had appeared to be a shoo-in for re-election. She was Lula’s handpicked successor. The Workers Party has run Brazil since 2003. During a decade of economic growth, millions of Brazilians rose out of poverty.
Eduardo Campos, the Socialists’ chosen candidate, was in third place, with 9 percent support, according to an earlier IBOPE poll, when he was killed last month. Silva, his running mate, began her campaign in Recife days after 130,000 people attended Campos’s funeral. Winning the presidency would be a remarkable achievement for a woman who grew up in a poor family of Amazon rubber tappers, hoped to become a nun before turning to evangelical Christianity, and learned to read when she was a teenager. Her mother was white, her father is a mix of black and Brazilian Indian ancestry, said Marilia Cesar, who wrote a 2010 biography.
Silva’s growing band of supporters includes residents of Brazilian slums, or favelas, business people who like her party’s “third way” programme, and evangelical Christians, an increasingly powerful demographic in Brazil.
She also attracts young, urban Brazilians who are disillusioned with politics. In research Moisés conducted this year, 82 percent said they did not trust political parties. A run of corruption scandals under Rousseff and Lula have exacerbated the distrust. “She is bringing the dissatisfaction of the Brazilians with the political system to the campaign,” Moisés said. Those sentiments were echoed in the enormous Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro, where Silva and other Socialist politicians campaigned last weekend.
“She is going to fight. Put things in order,” said Maria da Conceição, 54, rounding up her children. “We see sincerity in her.”
Her friend Claudia Mendonça, 42, said she, too, will vote for Silva. “She is determined, she has strength, she has drive,” Mendonça said. “She is not promising the world.” Brazil’s economy officially went into recession in August. Inflation is hovering right at the government’s 6.5 percent ceiling. This hurts Rousseff’s campaign.
It also opens up space for Silva. Her party’s detailed government program was published Aug. 29. Neither the Workers Party nor the PSDB have theirs ready yet.
Proposals in that programme make Silva “our reliable agent of change,” said Tony Volpon, head of emerging markets research for the Americas at Nomura Securities International in New York. These include inflation targets, an independent Central Bank, a free-floating exchange rate and an independent Fiscal Responsibility Council to evaluate public spending.
“She is not only signaling changing policy. She is changing the institutional framework by which policies are made,” Volpon said. Silva wants to rescue Brazil’s ailing ethanol industry and focus more on alternative energy sources. This concerns the oil industry, gearing up production of Brazil’s vast “pre-salt” offshore oil reserves.WP-BLOOMBERG
