BRASILIA (Reuters) – Pro-business candidates likely will dominate the race to take over from Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, with his handpicked successor and the governor of the nation’s richest state ahead of emerging leftist rivals.
Polls show Sao Paulo state Governor Jose Serra, a centrist opposition politician, leading Lula chief of staff Dilma Rousseff, a center-left candidate, by about 20 percentage points in the run-up to the 2010 election.
Neither is seen likely to make dramatic changes to the market-friendly policies pursued by Lula and credited by investors for spurring the strongest period of economic growth in Brazil in decades.
Part of the left is placing its hopes on Marina Silva, a former environment minister under Lula, and Ciro Gomes, a former governor from Ceara, a northeastern state, who have said they may enter the presidential campaign.
Although Silva and Gomes could siphon votes from Rousseff, their lack of name recognition, access to television advertising, and strong track record means they will struggle to compete, analysts said.
“Without a doubt, it remains a two-horse race between Dilma and Serra,” said Ricardo Guedes, head of polling firm Sensus.
The probability of a contest between two mainstream candidates is good news for investors, who are betting Brazil’s economy will recover quickly from the global crisis and regain its status as an emerging market darling.
“I don’t see the election generating political turmoil. The market expects Serra or Dilma to win and that means continuity of economic policies,” said Ribeiro de Oliveira, head of a financial consulting firm in Sao Paulo.
Big parties favoured
After rattling financial markets during his campaign for the presidency in 2002, Lula won over skeptical investors with a programme that stressed fiscal discipline and economic pragmatism. He was easily re-elected in 2006.
The popular former union leader is constitutionally barred from running for a third straight term.
Serra and Rousseff may add economic growth to price stability as an objective in setting inflation targets, but they broadly support Lula’s current economic policies.
Serra, however, could weaken ties with Lula’s left-wing allies in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.
Brazil’s electoral system tends to favor large parties, such as Serra’s Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) and Rousseff’s Workers’ Party (PT) — greater access to free television time to run campaign ads is among the advantages.
Faced with an uphill challenge, Silva, who is renowned among foreign conservationists for her work defending the Amazon rain forest from destruction, is likely to appeal to women and hard-core leftists in a bid to weaken Rousseff.
Gomes, who is hot on the heels of Rousseff in the polls, would also be competing for a similar voter pool.
There is a remote chance the leftist candidates could so weaken Rousseff that Serra wins in the first round. Under Brazil’s election rules, a run-off election is held between the top two candidates if no one takes more than 50 percent.
But the soft-spoken Silva is little known in Brazil and is seen lacking the charisma and support to challenge contenders. Polls also show that voters care more about jobs, crime and other matters than the environment, her signature issue.
She was in fifth place with 3 percent support in a presidential election Datafolha poll last weekend. It showed Serra leading with 37 percent, followed by Rousseff with 16 percent and Gomes at 15 percent.
Former Senator Heloisa Helena, who founded her own Freedom and Socialism Party after breaking with the PT in 2003 and proposes a radical shift to the left, was in fourth place with with 12 percent. She won nearly 7 percent of the vote in the 2006 presidential election.
Lula’s influence
Gomes, a former Lula ally who has run for the presidency twice, is better placed than Silva to challenge Rousseff.
He did poorly in the 2002 campaign after making sexist remarks, struggling to control his temper and proposing restructuring the country’s public debt. He is Lula’s former minister for regional integration and is currently in Congress, but has held few high-profile positions recently.
In contrast, Rousseff can run on the government’s record of economic growth and the massive infrastructure investments that she has overseen, while Serra can highlight his long experience as a mayor and governor, as well as a tenure as the country’s planning and health minister.
Lula is expected to campaign heavily on behalf of Rousseff, who was treated for cancer this year. The Brazilian leader thinks she is best-placed to run the country with her training as an economist, managerial experience and iron-fisted style.
“(Rousseff) will have all the backing of the federal machinery and (Serra) will have a powerful name recall and support from the Sao Paulo electorate,” CAC, a Brasilia-based political consultancy, said in a research note.
Ultimately, it may Brazil’s economic success, which has led to a growing middle class and the electorate’s shift to the center, that dooms the smaller left-wing candidates next year.
“There is no room today for a third way in Brazil,” Guedes said.
