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The runup to Brazil's October presidential election has been thrown into turmoil by the woman who less than a month ago was seen as the leading candidate of the four-party center-right coalition that for seven years has backed up sitting president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who is constitutionally barred from reelection.
Hopes are now on hold that the election of governor Roseana Sarney, daughter of former president Jose Sarney and candidate of the coalition's Liberal Front Party (PFL), whose meteoric rise in opinion polls led he to a tie with Inacio "Lula" da Silva of the left-wing Workers Party, would assure continuity to the policies of the Cardoso administration.
Making common cause with Sarney's outrage because a state judge ordered a fraud probe into the dealings of her husband's business in which she is a partner--she charged "discrimination" against her for being a woman — the PFL said it would continue to give full backing to its presidential candidate but would abandon the ruling coalition. This means a divisive battle for votes could take place between Sarney and the candidate of Cardoso's own Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), former Health Minister Jose Serra, who lags far behind, thus helping leftist Lula to gain ground.
The PFL has been the staunchest ally of President Cardoso's Brazilian Social Democratic Party since he first came to power in 1995, ensuring Congressional support for Cardoso's sweeping free-market reforms. With the withdrawal, three PFL ministers will resign and PFL officials at other levels of government were likely to step down. It is not yet clear to what extent in the remaining seven months of the Cardoso administration the PFL will support government-backed votes in Congress after the split.
Financial markets have fretted about the PFL split, initially driving down Brazil's real currency and its bonds (they are now regaining ground) on fears the PFL will no longer support government bills. That applies above all to the extension of a financial tax (CPMF), which could cost the government 400 million reais ($170 million) a week if not passed.
However, concerns that the rift in the coalition might get leftist Lula elected president are wildly overstated.
In the first place, he has never been able to muster more that 32 percent of the vote in any past election. Surprisingly for a country that Brazilians themselves jokingly call "Belgindia" because of the wide disparity in personal income between its relatively small high-income "Belgium" base and a much larger low-income "India," the ideological left that Lula represents has never gained any large electoral ground.
Secondly, party politics in Brazil are more fluid, less contentious and more drawn to compromise that in other Latin American countries -a consequence of its easy-going Portuguese heritage, quite different from the much more confrontational style the rest of the region inherited from Spain. Chances are that, as the October election nears, pragmatism will take over and Sarney's PFL and Cardoso's PSDB will get together again, particularly if Serra, the PSDB candidate, continues not getting any traction with voters and Sarney begins to fall in the polls. President Cardoso already paved the way for a reconciliation in a letter to the PFL in which he said that he hoped the parties would unite behind a common candidate for the October vote "to better guarantee the continuity of the changes that we are introducing to the country."
There is a chance also that reconciliation may be prompted if the charismatic 47-year-old woman governor of the poor state of Maranhão with the engaging smile shows she is mobilizing the female vote (there are more women of voting age in Brazil than men) and begins to look like a potential winner.
The conventional wisdom among Brazilian political analysts is that Sarney will lose ground among more educated voters because of the prickly probe, which is looking for links to funds missing from a development agency. But the other side of the coin is that women in large numbers than usual may show their intention to come out to vote for Sarney because they may believe that, as she said, there was a political plot carried out by "a group out there that does not want women to get ahead."
Sarney's party is fully behind her in this view. "Our candidate was the victim of unprecedented violence, with clear political consequences, with the intention of weakening her and even pushing her out of the race," the PFL said in a statement when party leaders announced the decision of abandoning the governing coalition. If Roseana Sarney were to win the presidency of the largest country in Latin America-larger than the contiguous U.S. 48 states-she would not be the first woman president in the region.
This should be a surprise for U.S. conventional wisdom that has Latin America as being the most renowned source of "machismo." But, while the United States has not yet managed to nominate, much less elect, a woman as chief of state, Latin America can offer several examples of women who were elected to the highest office in the land.
Isabel Perón was president of Argentina from 1974 to 1976; Lidia Gueiler Tejada of Bolivia in 1979-80; Violeta Barrios de Chamorro of Nicaragua from 1990 to 1996. And since 1999, Mireya Elisa Moscoso de Arias is president of Panama.
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com