By Gamal Nkrumah The prognosis is dismal. Brazil is in a sorry state, but Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is riding to the rescue. As predicted, Cardoso, a 67-year-old sociologist, won a landslide victory on Sunday. There is much to be said about the air of studied sobriety that even his critics concede naturally emanates from the Brazilian president. For one, it wins votes. The timing of the elections was critically important as Brazil's negotiations with the International Monetary Fund are scheduled to begin in earnest next week. Brazil says it desperately needs a loan of between $16 billion and $22 billion from the IMF over the next 15 months. Brazil, with more than 106 million voters, is the largest democracy in Latin America. The Jornal Do Brasil described the country's presidential, gubernatorial and congressional elections as "the most important elections in the history of our country". There were few incidents of violence on election day. A ban on the sale of alcohol was enforced throughout the vast country -- the size of continental United States. However, a ban on last-minute campaigning was widely ignored. "Elections in Brazil are a joke. Everyone knows who will win in advance. Racism is rampant. African-Brazilians are treated as second class citizens. Life is cheap. Women give birth on sinks in public hospitals. The sick die waiting in hospital queues before they see a doctor. The police is corrupt and crimminal. The education system is in tatters. People are starving to death in some of the poorer states in Brazil. Our leaders have no respect for human rights and have no sense of social justice," Guilherme Vergueiro, an African Brazilian activist told Al-Ahram Weekly. Cardoso had promised a painful economic reform plan if re-elected: the country is in the grip of a recession, with a staggering $300 billion internal debt; the budget deficit is ballooning and currently stands at more than $60 billion; and unemployment is rampant, with an estimated 15 million unemployed people. The academic-turned-politician also promised to cut government spending and raise taxes. The Brazilian electorate, it seems, has a lot of faith in the magic of Cardoso's Plano Real, the economic reform programme that slashed Brazil's 2,400 per cent inflation. "The problem is that Brazil's poor have no say in how their country is run," Vergueiro told the Weekly. The Brazilian people crowned the success of Cardoso's Plano Real by electing him president in 1994. This time round, his success in containing the economic crisis largely depends on whether he can hold together the somewhat shaky coalition of five major political parties. The newly elected Brazilian Congress will vote on long delayed economic reforms to cut government spending and raise revenue early next year, and Cardoso needs the backing of the legislators. The cuts and taxation will be two of the most important decisions of the new parliament. The international community has made no secret of its support for Cardoso. The IMF, for one, made it clear that a victory by the left would spell disaster for Brazil's attempt at stemming the tide of economic deterioration. As leader of South America's most populous country and the continent's economic powerhouse, this is Cardoso's chance to leave his mark on history. As far as the left is concerned, the struggle is on to fit the pieces together again. Cardoso leads a powerful anti-leftist coalition. His nearest rival, Luiz Inacio Da Silva popularly known as "Lula", is a car factory worker from the impoverished northeast region of the country. "It is not the [world financial] crisis that has created unemployment in Brazil, but Cardoso's government. We have the policies to change that," claimed Lula, and he promised to produce 15 million jobs in three years. Obviously, the Brazilian voters discounted his claims, and his protestations have stirred barely a ripple. Ideals are fine, ideology is out. Nevertheless, Lula and his Workers Party managed to muster an impressive 35 per cent of the vote -- far better than the previous presidential election in 1994 when Cardoso received 54 per cent of the vote and thus defeated Lula, his closest competitor, who only secured 27 per cent. Lula was the Workers Party presidential candidate in the 1989 and 1994 elections. Heralded as the "Solidarity of Latin America", the Workers Party had four seats in the Federal Senate and 49 in the Chamber of Deputies. Smaller leftist political parties such as the Democratic Labour Party and the Brazilian Labour Party did much worse this time round. No independent candidacies are permitted in the country and all candidates for the National Congress must belong to a registered political party. The October 1998 election was the first time Brazil's voters used computerised electronic voting machines -- some 60 per cent of the voters did so. Vote buying, a practice most prevalent among the poverty-stricken northeastern states -- in both rural and small town constituencies -- is rife. One of the primary methods of election campaigning in Brazil is the use of free television air time. The amount of air time awarded to a candidate is determined by his or her party's strength in the National Congress. Cardoso ran a one-man show. The political map of Brazil is varied, so how did the other political parties fare? The big three conservative parties are the Liberal Front Party (PFL), the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) and President Cardoso's Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB). At the last elections in 1994, the PFL had 14 seats in the Federal Senate and 89 in the Chamber of Deputies. The PMDB and the PSDB had 15 and 12 seats respectively in the Federal Senate and 107 and 62 seats respectively in the Chamber of Deputies. The Brazilian Progressive Party (PPB) led by Paulo Maluf, a Brazilian of Lebanese descent, won 53 seats in the lower house of parliament -- the Chamber of Deputies -- and only one seat in the Federal Senate -- the upper house of the Brazilian parliament. Brazil is a veritable melting pot and the country has traditionally experienced uneasy race relations. The Quilombos pockets of slave resistance to Portuguese overlordship are part of the country's folk memories. The Palmares Confederation created in 1590 by slaves from a sugar mill estate in the northeastern state of Pernambuco staged a bloody rebellion and when it was brutally crushed, they took refuge in neighbouring Alagoas sate -- which was finally overrun 100 years later in 1694. The Palmares hero Zumbi is still widely celebrated by African-Brazilians today. The vast majority of Black Brazilians, if they voted at all, voted for Lula. The country is also home to almost a million Japanese-Brazilians and there are some five million Brazilians of Arab descent -- mostly Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian. The Arabs and Japanese Brazilians voted overwhelmingly for Cardoso. Months before the elections and on election day, army troops were deployed in the Amazon forest basin -- a sprawling territory the size of Western Europe which encompasses half a dozen sparsely populated states. This area is home to most of Brazil's 180 different indigenous tribes. The Yanomami, the largest indigenous group with a population of 25,000 in the states of Amazonas and Roraima, faces the threat of extinction. There were five million indigenous Indians when Pedro Alvares Cabral, the first European to set foot on Brazilian soil, "discovered" the country in 1500. European diseases and brutal extermination campaigns reduced their number to the quarter of a million it stands at today. The Perimetral Norte Road, which crosses the Yanomami territory, poses the greatest danger to the Yanomami's traditional way of life. The presence of thousands of gold and diamond prospectors from the poverty-stricken northeastern part of the country poses another threat and so do logging and mining companies. The destruction of the equatorial jungle, the Yanomami's natural habitat, worries environmentalist worldwide. The burning question remains the Brazilian elections. How is the ailing Brazilian economy to be returned to health? Cardoso is expected to tighten monetary and fiscal policies, but he must now find new ways of restoring confidence in the Brazilian economy. On the bright side, Brazil is one of the main magnets of foreign investment in the emerging markets and the country has $50 trillion in reserves. But still there are growing fears concerning capital flight.
