Brazil & Southern Cone - January 2014 (ISSN 1741-4431)

On 2 January the governor of Pernambuco and 2014 presidential hopeful Eduardo Campos welcomed members of the national opposition Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB) into his state cabinet.

Campos, of the Partido Socialista Brasileiro (PSB), before Christmas sealed a deal with the PSDB’s 2014 presidential nominee, Senator Aécio Neves, to ally in key states ahead of the 2014 general election including in Brazil’s main electoral district of São Paulo, Neves’ home state of Minas Gerais, Paraíba and the wealthy Rio Grande do Sul. The aim is to take the fight to President Dilma Rousseff of the ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), who will be bidding for a second term in October. The PSDB officials are slotting into positions vacated by members of the Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (PTB), which has opted to contest the state in 2014 in alliance with the PT (see sidebar).

One unhappy camper in all of this is the former environment minister and Rousseff's main poll rival, Marina Silva, who has allied her Rede Sustentabilidade (Rede) civic movement with Campos and the PSB for 2014 and is none too pleased at Campos’s heavy flirtation with the PSDB. This is especially the case in São Paulo, where Rede hopes to field its own candidate but where the PSB is committed to a strategic alliance with the PSDB, which runs the state with Governor Geraldo Alckmin, who will be seeking a second term next year.

There is some anticipation that Campos will step aside to make way for Silva at the top of the PSB/Rede slate, although it is also the case that Campos lately has strengthened his position by forging strategic local level alliances with the PSDB and national alliances with others like the Partido Popular Socialista (PPS), itself a former Neves backer. This puts him in a better position vis a vis Silva, who failed to get Rede registered as a political party and who thus is dependent on the PSB alliance as a 2014 electoral-political vehicle.

• The PSDB’ s Murilo Guerra, a lawyer and former superintendent in Pernambuco of the Brazilian institute for small and micro enterprises (Sebrae), is the new Pernambuco state labour secretary, while Caio Mello is the new state transit secretary (Detran).