Latinnews Archive
Brazil and Southern Cone - 19 September 1996
Unknowns emerge from the shadows; MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS CAMPAIGN PRODUCES SOME SURPRISES
With only weeks to go to the crucial local elections on 3 October, the previously unimaginable seems quite likely to happen: the big political machines will be defeated in the main urban centres by political unknowns. President Cardoso stands to suffer a particularly serious setback in Sao Paulo.
Rise of Pitta
Opinion polls in late August showed Celso Pitta, the protege of mayor Paulo Maluf, well out in front in Brazil's biggest city. With almost 50% support, he had more than twice the backing of his closest rival, former mayor Luiza Erundina of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT). Cardoso's choice, former planning minister Jose Serra, with only 10%, seemed virtually out of the reckoning.
This is an astonishing state of affairs. Serra, a senator, is a powerful figure in Sao Paulo, and enjoys the sponsorship of the government machine. A good showing by him in October is regarded as vital to Cardoso's re-election aspirations in 1998.
He was prevailed upon to stand in Sao Paulo precisely to block the ambitions of Maluf who, although he belongs to the theoreticaly pro-government Partido Progressista Brasileiro (PPB), has his own political agenda.
Cardoso's strategy looks like coming badly unstuck -- just at a time when he has decided to come clean about wanting to run for a second term, and has authorised his supporters in congress to debate and draft the required constitutional amendment.
Not even Pitta's most fervent admirers gave him much of a chance when he was chosen as mayoral candidate by Maluf earlier this year. As well as being a political unknown, and obviously a surrogate of Maluf, he is black: hardly an obvious advantage in the industrial and business capital.
But he has performed well, carrying out an energetic grassroots campaign, and has gathered strength as the more superficially imposing Serra has faded.
Pitta is a 49-year-old economist, born in Rio, trained in Britain, who worked for the Maluf family company, Eucatex, before being brought into the city government as finance secretary. Tall and elegant, he comes from a comfortable, middle-class background.
Conde builds success
A similar phenomenon has emerged in Rio, where a successful architect and political novice, Luiz Paulo Conde, 62, was well ahead of the field in an Ibope poll on 21 August: 39% support against 19% for Sergio Cabral Filho of Cardoso's PSDB, and only 6% for the PT's Chico Alencar.
Conde's only previous claim to fame is that he was put in charge of the Rio public works programme known as Rio Cidade (see box) in 1992. More to the point, he is the personal choice of mayor Cesar Maia, who has also emerged as a potential presidential candidate, uninhibited by his membership of the Partido da Frente Liberal (part of the government coalition).
Son of a Spanish immigrant, Conde began working in his father's shoe factory at the age of 14. He had to overcome massive initial opposition to Rio Cidade, due to the monumental traffic jams it caused.
One place where the PSDB candidate should do well is Belo Horizonte, where Amilcar Vianna Martins enjoys the backing of his old friend, PSDB governor Eduardo Azeredo. He is up against the PT's Virgilio Guimaraes, candidate of the present mayor, Patrus Ananias.
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