Brazil's presidential race takes to the airwaves
Reuters, Tuesday, August 18, 1998 at 20:18
By William Schomberg
BRASILIA, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Brazilian presidential
candidates took to the airwaves on Tuesday to woo voters in a
race widely expected to give President Fernando Henrique
Cardoso another four years in office.
Across the vast nation, television sets and radios rang to
the sounds of upbeat jingles promising more jobs, better public
services, less corruption and a "fairer" Brazil as the season
of free airtime for candidates began.
More than 106 million registered voters can go to the polls
on Oct. 4 to choose a new president, state governors, most of
Congress and state representatives in Latin America's largest
election.
While just 10 percent of the population read newspapers,
over 90 percent of households have a TV set, making television
the central part of any Brazilian election campaign.
"It's not enough just to appear on television these days.
The decisive issue is who has the most minutes on television,"
said Muniz Sodre, a communications professor in Rio de Janeiro.
Cardoso, for instance, has more than double the airtime of
his nearest rival, having constructed an alliance of political
parties that gave their allotted airtime to his campaign. The
president has cobbled together 23 minutes of airtime per day.
Candidates were eligible to buy airtime previously but the
media campaigns did not really begin until the free airtime was
released on Tuesday.
Even before then, Cardoso looked almost certain to win a
second term, thanks largely to his popularity in slashing
stratospheric inflation.
But Cardoso appeared not to be taking any chances in his
debut television spot, mixing a celebration of his achievements
in power with an admission that he could have done more.
"There are lots of things that I would do differently," he
said, citing his government's failure to rein in out-of-control
public spending through budget reform.
In a 10-minute "interview" with a friendly journalist, the
president outlined plans to fight record unemployment, defended
his government's much-criticized response to a drought earlier
this year, and spoke lovingly of his grandchildren.
"I am certain we are on the right course," Cardoso
concluded as a country music jingle faded in. "I will create a
fairer and better country, with less unemployment."
A poll published on Tuesday in newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo
gave Cardoso 42 percent of the vote while his nearest
challenger, leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, had 26 percent.
The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage
points.
It also showed Cardoso repeating his thumping triumph over
Lula in 1994 by winning the October election in the first round
by gathering more votes than all his rivals combined.
Otherwise, the voting goes to a second round on Oct. 24.
Lula avoided direct attacks on Cardoso and appealed to
Brazilians' sense of national identity in his televised
message.
"I have a dream of building a nation where every man and
every woman is proud of being Brazilian," said the former trade
union leader, looking sharp in a dark suit but sounding just as
gruff as when he led factory gate protests in the 1970s against
Brazil's military dictatorship.
Noticeable by its absence was the revolutionary red of
previous campaigns, replaced this time by the green and yellow
of Brazil's national flag.
Lula has repeatedly accused the media of underestimating
his popularity. A young black woman who spoke for most of his
program implored his supporters to wear white clothes and tie
white ribbons to their cars to prove his support levels were
higher than polls showed.
"It's time to make the change for a government that has
people like us as its priority," the presenter said in an
appeal to Brazil's black population, about half of its 160
million people.
Copyright 1998, Reuters News Service |
