or The Thief of Baghdad and the Pied Piper of Brazil 

Looking at the range of Lula’s backers one cannot help
recalling Robert Browning’s poem on the Pied Piper of Hamelin:
“…And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats”…

John Fitzpatrick

One wonders if Brazil’s presidential candidates, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, (PT) or José Serra (PSDB) have any contacts with the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s campaign advisers because if they do I suggest they contract them immediately for the last days of the campaign here. The cost would be worth it. In the previous Iraqi election these campaigners helped Hussein gain 99.96 percent of the vote, not a bad result by any means.

However, this time round they surpassed themselves and helped Hussein pull off a pretty effective result by gaining 100 percent of the votes. Of course, Hussein had the advantage over Lula and Serra of being the only candidate, but even then, according to the authorities in Baghdad, the polls showed that 11,445,638 electors voted for him and none against, with no abstentions.

In theory, Hussein will be around for another seven years—that is, unless George W. Bush decides otherwise. Unfortunately no Middle Eastern genie is likely to pop out of a bottle for our two candidates but the way they are seeking votes in every nook and cranny and from every ethnic and religious group would put Hussein to shame.

Lula has added more oddballs to his already odd coalition. His PT has the backing of a few smaller leftist groups, including the Brazilian Communist Party, plus the evangelical PL party. In fact, this party provided Lula’s running mate, a millionaire businessman called José Alencar. Now, Alencar may be an excellent businessman, but let’s hope nothing happens to Lula, should he be elected president, and he remains on the sidelines as faceless and anonymous as Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s vice president, Marco Maciel of the PFL.

Alencar recently decided to talk about the Middle East conflict and came up with a half-baked idea which implied that the Israelis should settle in Angola and let the Palestinians have their land back. (He never said where the Angolans should go but, as most of them speak Portuguese, maybe they could move here and work in one of his factories.) Brazil’s Jewish community was actually more baffled than alarmed by this nonsense and Alencar ended up apologizing. As political correctness is in its infancy in Brazil (thank God!) this matter was not followed up as it would have been in the US, for example. Like Lula’s recent comment that black people could be identified by scientific means it was not an issue.

Windows of Opportunity

Lula gained new admirers, as expected, from the candidates who failed in the first round. Ciro Gomes (PPS), who spent his campaign complaining about Lula’s lack of experience, even turned up in one of Lula’s TV propaganda spots exhorting his supporters to vote for the man whom a week earlier he had thought unfit to run a country as great as Brazil. (There is talk here that Gomes, along with Minas Gerais governor, Itamar Franco, may end up being rewarded with ambassadorships. If so, let us hope they are both sent to far away countries with no direct flights to Brazil.)

The other loser in the first round, Anthony Garotinho (PSB) also urged his supporters to vote for the PT candidate. Garotinho’s wife won the governorship of Rio de Janeiro state against the PT candidate in the first round, but this has not stopped him from siding with Lula. (As to Garotinho, there are reports that he wants to be appointed head of the federal savings bank, the Caixa Federal. Presumably this would allow him to carry out his campaign pledge to cut interest rates from their current 21 percent to low single figures.)

Other Lula supporters include ex-governor of Maranhão state, Roseana Sarney (PFL), who could herself have been a candidate had she not become enmeshed in a financial scandal. Her father José Sarney (PMDB), a former President, like Itamar Franco, is also backing Lula, as is Senator Antônio Carlos Magalhães. Magalhães resigned from the Senate in disgrace after breaking procedural rules while he was chairman. Nobody is surprised though that Bahia voters have returned him.

Other strange supporters from the old-style political bosses the PT has always opposed are former São Paulo mayor Paulo Maluf (PPB) and former São Paulo governor Orestes Quércia (PMDB) who both flopped in their bid to become governor of São Paulo state. Leonel Brizola (PDT), a former governor of Rio state, also gave Lula his backing. With the exception of Franco and Brizola, who are both just grumpy old men, all the others have question marks over their ethical behavior and how they achieved their personal wealth.

Looking at the range of Lula’s backers one cannot help recalling Robert Browning’s wonderful poem on the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Here is the poet’s description of how the rats, which had been plaguing the city, appeared when the Pied Piper played:

“And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered;
And the muttering grew to a grumbling;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats,
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,
Families by tens and dozens,
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives —
Followed the Piper for their lives.
From street to street he piped advancing,
And step for step they followed dancing,
Until they came to the river Weser
Wherein all plunged and perished!”

Unlike the Pied Piper though Lula will not be doing the citizens of Brazil a favor by seeing the rats get their just deserts, but may well encourage a new plague.

Playing Hard

Returning to reality, poor Serra cannot count on this support which, in theory, could bring in the 25.8 million voters who voted for Gomes, Garotinho and the two minor candidates in the first round. According to the news magazine Veja, Lula only needs an extra 3.1 million to win on October 27 while Serra needs 22.8 million. A poll published October 15 gave Serra 31 percent and Lula 60 percent, showing that Serra is making little ground.

However, Serra is also seeking support from any quarter and has been chasing up evangelicals, members of the ethnic and religious groupings, pop singers and artists. At the same time, he is starting to get tough with Lula, accusing him of being contradictory on positions and challenging him to debate the issues. He even won a slight victory this week when an actress appeared on one of his propaganda shows and said she was “frightened” of what a PT government would bring.

The PT overreacted and showed that in a democracy you have to take the blows as well as give them and accused the Serra camp of “terrorism”. Serra’s team will try and bait Lula even further and intends homing in on PT-run administrations to show how inefficient they are.

Whether this will be a winning tactic is doubtful. However, one has to give Serra a lot of credit for the way he has pulled himself back into the race from his poor position two months ago and for the energy he is showing in the last stretch of what has been a long race. In many ways, he has been more impressive than Lula and deserves to win.

John Fitzpatrick is a Scottish journalist who first visited Brazil in 1987 and has lived in São Paulo since 1995. He writes on politics and finance and runs his own company, Celtic Comunicações - www.celt.com.br, which specializes in editorial and translation services for Brazilian and foreign clients. You can reach him at jf@celt.com.br 

© John Fitzpatrick 2002

You can also read John Fitzpatrick's articles in Infobrazil, at www.infobrazil.com

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