It was no surprise that speculation ran rife amongst Brazilians that President Dilma was behind the jet crash that killed opposition candidate Eduardo Campos on August 13th. This is Latin America after all, where nobody puts much trust in politicians, apart from their capacity for Machiavellian wickedness. But with lack of evidence, the Brazilian media unlike Brazilians on social networking websites, showed no form of wild hysteria and instead reported confirmed facts about the accident.
What has also calmed, now that the 2014 FIFA World Cup is over, is all the mini crises that seemed to shake the political world every time it looked like a stadium would not be ready in time or a worker got injured or, not least, those unmentionable figures: 7-1.
For the last two years, the national protests, first sparked in 2012 when bus fares increased R$0.25 and triggered an outcry about the poor quality of public transport across Brazilian cities, has dominated global media coverage of Brazil. The World Cup gave Brazilians the perfect opportunity to have their opinions heard in a worldwide stage in an attempt to expose the current government’s failure to spread public funds. Billions were being spent in stadiums while schools and hospitals lay neglected, with badly paid staff and public transport remaining poor and expensive.
Prior to the start of the World Cup, a poll was conducted by the magazine “Carta Capital” showing Dilma comfortably in the lead with 40% of voters’ intentions. Since then a new poll through Ibope (Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics) shows a slight drop for the PT (Workers’ Party) candidate and a slight increase for her rivals, Aécio Neves (PSDB – Brazilian Social Democracy Party) at 23% and Eduardo Campos (PSB – Brazilian Socialist Party) at 9%. With the death of Eduardo Campos, ex-Environment Minister Marina Silva stepped up as his replacement candidate for presidency.
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A new poll published on the 18th August, shows Dilma Rousseff down to 36%, Marina Silva in second with 21% and PSDB candidate Aécio Neves in 3rd place with 20%. The number of “blanks” and “undecided” voters also reduced since Marina entered the presidential competition, which would cause the elections to be decided in the second round since President Dilma would not have the majority of votes.
The poll shows that if Marina and Dilma were to go head to head on the second round of elections, the Socialist candidate would receive 47% of votes in comparison with Dilma’s 43%. If Dilma and Aécio were going head to head in the second round, Dilma would come out on top with 47% of votes against Aécio’s 25%.
Dilma will no doubt gain votes from those benefitting from her famous “bolsas”- government funded “handouts” for the poor. But these have been criticised by the middle classes electorate as short term populist measures to ‘buy’ votes rather than long-term policies that will employ people and help the economy. Angela, one retired teacher and education supervisor complains: ‘These are government funds which should have been used to improve the educational and health system and are now being used to fund millions of Brazilians who, on receiveing a good amount of money from the government, don’t bother looking for work.’
Dilma has also been attacked for “importing” Cuban doctors. After Veja magazine called what is known as The More Doctors Medical programme, ‘people trafficking’ since the doctors only receive US$400 per month from the Cuban government to help with the living costs in Brazil; Dilma asked the Cuban government to increase the pay to $US1000. Retired teacher Angela said: “Dilma is hoping to show that there are doctors who are able to work with less technology and for a lower pay so that she can reduce the pay for Brazilian doctors.’
However the Cuban doctors programme has been supported by The Pan-American Health Organization who stated: “it has already revolutionised the care of patients in the state of Espírito Santo,” with the UN coordinator Naiara Vidoto commenting that in one town “the three doctors of Cuban origin had been welcomed with open arms by the 12000 people who benefit from that particular health unit.”
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Most recently, Dilma has passed a bill to start the second phase of “Ciências Sem Fronteiras” in June 2014 (science without frontiers) which is giving out 100.000 paid scholarships for Brazilian students who excel in their final exams to study abroad – especially in engineering courses, which she believes will provide young Brazilians with new perspectives as well as exposing them to a higher level of technology that upon their return, will help the country to develop technologically. This bill is a clear tactic to bring in the votes of young Brazilians about to start higher education. The first phase of this programme gave out 83.000 scholarships.
So, while President Dilma’s re-election plans appeared to be slightly scuppered by the involvement of Marina Silva as new Socialist opposition candidate, her momentum hasn’t been completely derailed. Many voters that were with her from the beginning of polls earlier this year have stuck with her, despite the gossip and disapproval of her decisions regarding the “misspending” of public funds. Needless to say, there will be many more hurdles to jump before she crosses the finishing line in October.
