On October 3, over 100m of Brazil’s 194m people will vote for a successor to that nation’s hugely popular and successful President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The outcome will matter not only in the Caribbean and the wider hemisphere, but as much or more to the G20 of which Brazil is a member, as well as to nations across the world that two or more decades ago rarely gave Brazil a second thought.
President da Silva is not standing again as his nation’s constitution does not permit a third term. Instead he has gone about as far as he is allowed electorally to support as his successor the ruling party candidate, Dilma Rousseff. In brief, she is on the left of Brazilian politics and fought as a guerrilla against Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1960s. She subsequently became active in Brazilian politics, eventually joining Brazil’s ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores, (PT), the Workers Party, in 2000 becoming energy minister and then chief of staff for President Lula da Silva.
Her principal opponent is Jose Serra who was a former presidential candidate when his party lost in 2002 to President Lula. He is an experienced politician, a former health minister and presently Governor of the State of São Paulo.
A further candidate of note is Marina Silva, a former environment minister and the Green Party candidate. She may take around ten per cent of the vote to play a role as king or queen maker should there be no outright winner in the first round. She was a member of the Workers Party but left after 30 years having had significant differences with Ms Rousseff over what she saw as her over aggressive development plans for the Amazon.
Irrespective, opinion polls put Ms Rousseff far ahead. In the most recent, released on September 22 by TV Globo, she is forecast to take 49 per cent of the popular vote support against 28 per cent for Mr Serra, enabling Ms Rousseff to win an outright victory in the first round.
Politically and economically it is widely reported that her views are little different from those of the outgoing President. Indeed both of the two front runners in the presidential race seem to have remarkably similar domestic approaches to the economy, differing largely only on aspects of social policy and the use of royalties from oil. So much so that analysts suggest that regardless of who wins the election, Brazil will continue to follow an orthodox economic policy that relies on a floating exchange rate, fiscal austerity and the targeting of inflation.
However, where the two leading candidates differ substantially is on foreign policy with Mr Serra being, for instance, highly critical of President Chavez’s policies in Venezuela or those of Evo Morales in Bolivia. He also wants to see changes in the structure of Mercosur so that it becomes something closer to a free trade area. All of which are ideas that seem to find little resonance with popular sentiment within Brazil or with most of its neighbours.
In the end, the issue for voters will be whether Ms Rousseff can translate her predecessor’s immense popularity – President da Silva still has an extraordinary eighty per cent approval rating – into the delivery of the WP government’s key strategic plans that involve continuing its programme of accelerated economic growth, exploiting its huge oil reserves, maintaining expenditure on social programmes and playing an ever greater role in the hemisphere and the wider world.
Helping her chances of electoral victory is the fact that Brazil’s elections are taking place against the background of a sustained period of unprecedented economic growth. Employment is rising, growth in 2010 is forecast at around five per cent, the currency is appreciating in value and there are positive social indicators (poverty levels remain high but are starting to decrease) and the potential of the Republic’s oil, agriculture and mining sector remains substantial, albeit, in need of close environmental audit.
These are developments that the whole Caribbean might give closer thought to.
Suriname and Guyana are of course fully aware of the regional and hemispheric significance of Brazil and have spent considerable time deepening their dialogue with their neighbour. Guyana particularly has much to gain if the Brazilian-financed $5M Takutu River Bridge helps open the landlocked Brazilian state of Roraima to the sea. It is hoping for Brazilian support for with a 350-mile road linking Boa Vista in northern Brazil to Georgetown and the construction of an 800-megawatt hydropower facility. The two nations also engaged in security co-operation, and trade between the two countries has almost doubled in the past four years, to $17.8 million in 2008, according to President Jagdeo.
However, changes in Brazil are little reported or commented on in the rest of the region.
This is unfortunate as apart from meeting in hemispheric and international fora or through the bilateral foreign policy and investment initiatives that other Caricom nations such as Trinidad and Jamaica have taken, Brazil and the Caribbean could get closer. They have interests in common that range from the environment to nuclear non-proliferation; though small, the Caribbean has a significant bloc of votes in the United Nations; the Caribbean needs a friend in the G20; there are opportunities in the region for greater Brazilian involvement in public-private partnerships and investment; tourism can be developed if air routes or links via Panama can be improved; and there are opportunities for security co-operation if, as seems likely, Europe and North America continue their slow withdrawal from the region.
The probability is that Ms Rousseff will win Brazil’s October 3 election. She does not have the extraordinary charisma of President da Silva, but she offers policy consistency and the stability that most Brazilians and the wider world want to see from an emerging global power. Some Caribbean nations, most notably in the Hispanic Caribbean, have already been cultivating a relationship. Brazil is an important and largely like-minded power. The Caribbean as a whole ought therefore to seek the earliest of opportunities to encourage Dilma Rousseff and her new government to take a greater interest in the fortunes of the region.
Previous columns can be found at www.caribbean-council.org
