Brazilian president headed for unprecedented win
Reuters, Saturday, October 03, 1998 at 18:47
By William Schomberg
BRASILIA, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a
suave ex-sociology professor turned proven inflation fighter,
looks set on Sunday to become the first Brazilian president
elected to a second term.
Polls show that Cardoso, 67, has more support than his
dozen challengers combined.
Brazilians see Cardoso, who redrew the nation's political
and economic landscape during the past four years as president,
as the politician best able to handle a new fiscal crisis.
Barring the unforeseen, he will become Brazil's first
democratically elected leader since 1960 to complete a first
term.
Perhaps even more importantly, he is the only Brazilian
president since the 1950s who has managed to tame the nation's
historically wild economy for more than a few months.
"People in Washington have nicknamed him 'Brazil's first
export quality president,' and when you look at the ones
(presidents) that went before him, you can see why," said a
foreign diplomat.
Brazil's recent history has not been noted for outstanding
leaders. The armed forces sent tanks into the streets in a coup
in 1964 and finally gave up power just 13 years ago.
Since then, Brazil has elected as president Tancredo Neves,
who died before taking power, and Fernando Collor, a
self-styled anti-corruption crusader who was forced out of
office in 1992 amid allegations of influence peddling.
His replacement, Itamar Franco, is better remembered for
his antics with a samba dancer at the Rio de Janeiro carnival
in 1994 than for the job he did in two years as president.
Last year, Cardoso persuaded Congress to rewrite the
constitution to allow reelection and give Brazil the kind of
political stability that has eluded it for decades.
During the past few decades, as Brazil lurched from crisis
to crisis, Cardoso climbed the political ladder.
At factory gate protests against the dictatorship in the
1970s, he rubbed shoulders with union leaders, including Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva, who become his top challenger in 1994 and
again this year for the nation's presidency.
By 1983, Cardoso was in the Senate. In 1988, he founded the
Brazilian Social Democratic Party. In 1992, he reached the
cabinet as foreign minister.
But Cardoso's big break came when he was appointed finance
minister and oversaw the introduction of the inflation-bashing
Real Plan in 1994, which helped him to win the elections with a
massive majority a few months later.
Now he is one of Latin America's most respected leaders,
having turned Brazil's chaotic economy into one of the world's
hottest emerging markets.
His idea of relaxation is to write cerebral critiques of
modern political thinking and exchange letters with Britain
Prime Minister Tony Blair, probably his role model of the
moment.
In Brazil, where sophistication is generally expressed in
smart suits or fast cars, Cardoso remains an enigma.
"His intellectual background is combined with subtle doses
of seduction, skill, pragmatism and ambiguity," wrote columnist
Tereza Cruvinel in newspaper O Globo. "For him, everything
works out fine, even what seems to be a disaster."
Still, Cardoso's political star has dimmed a bit since the
"miracle of falling prices" in 1994.
Unemployment is at a record high, big cities are plagued
with violence and the Maoist-influenced Landless Movement (MST)
has recruited tens of thousands of dirt-poor farmers into a
sometimes violent struggle for land reform.
Former comrades from the anti-dictatorship struggle have
branded him a turncoat for giving up on his left-wing views and
the Roman Catholic church regularly attacks his pro-market
policies.
Financial markets that toasted Cardoso as they reveled in
soaring stock prices and huge privatization have also begun to
take a more critical view of his government, now that his Real
Plan is facing its biggest threat.
Brazil suffered huge dollar outflows after Russia's
devaluation in August spread panic in world financial markets.
Only the prospect of a rescue by the International Monetary
Fund saved Cardoso's economic achievement from disaster.
Political analysts say that if reelected, Cardoso will have
to drop his instinctive consensus-seeking style to ram through
drastic cost-cutting measures that are seen as his only option
to keep the economy alive.
"If he doesn't, the Real Plan goes under and Cardoso goes
with it," said consultant Murillo de Aragao. "But if he gets to
the end of his second term with the Real Plan intact, he'll be
hailed as the most brilliant leader in the country's history."
Copyright 1998, Reuters News Service |
