A few arrogant and presumptuous colleagues might say that they have a "scoop" worthy of a Pulitzer Prize. Others, more modest, would claim that they are just revealing a "Punchinello secret", in other words, something that everybody already knows. The truth, however, is that at the end of last week José Serra assumed, for the first time, that he is candidate to the Presidency.

Serra admitted having one thousand and one arguments to address the São Paulo electorate and explain that the commitment to remain until the end of his mandate as mayor of São Paulo has been broken by new facts. He is sure that voters will understand and even will encourage him to run for president of Brazil.

The Most Prestigious Name

It was during a meeting with friends, already on Saturday by dawn, in the São Paulo Jardins neighborhood, that the mayor announced his decision. He was holding the latest public opinion poll ordered by his party, the PSDB - the kind of survey that will not be published - informing that not only he is the favorite among the PSDB bases, but especially, that he would beat Lula in a second round.

Everybody knew about this, for weeks, but the numbers confirmation gave Serra the necessary oxygen to publicly assume his decision. For now, only a restricted public is aware, but, by the end of the month, more people will know that he will be the only candidate in his party's convention, in December or January.

José Serra is sure that he is the name with better chances to beat president Lula, in his attempt of a second mandate. He will count on the support from the economic-financial elites, that seemed reticent when President Lula, last week, informed his intention of disputing the re-election.

Not because the elites imagine a full continuity of the current economic politics, in Serra's hypothetical mandate, but precisely because the changes that he will promote in the current neoliberal model will reveal the importance of readjustments and alterations that president Lula did not want or could not undertake. Even in the financial speculation circles, Serra supplants Lula in terms of credibility. "Change to keep" might be his secret message to the potentates.

It remains to be seen whether the wind will really blow through these mountains, but everything seems to indicate that they will, especially because, the biggest representative of the mountains agrees with him. An agreement between Serra and Minas Gerais's governor Aécio Neves is about to be celebrated.

Neves would dispute the re-election in Minas and would leave the Palácio da Liberdade (Freedom Palace) to become candidate to the vice-presidency in 2010, when Serra would have the chance of being re-elected.

After that, he would have the whole eight years ahead, to do what his grandfather (Tancredo Neves, who was elected President, but died before being inaugurated) wasn't able to do, due to the laws of nature...

Crumbs, for the Dogs...

The government's decision of giving the military a 13% wage increase plus 10% in the first semester of the next year didn't go far enough to please the armed forces. First because the government's commitment was to authorize 23% in March of this year and again in 2006. And also because they not only were but continue to be humiliated by the palatial technocrats, those who proclaim that they are been given much more than the men in uniform would deserve.

You can't hide this: the economic team has been used as humiliation instrument of the military. The open wounds of 1964 up to the end of João Figueiredo's government do not heal that easily. While gobbling toads standing in attention, the armed forces realized that the decision to deny them more than necessary readjustments had more profound reasons, and was taken at the top. The military complaints don't come from the apathy of the Defense Minister and vice-president, José Alencar and much less from the indignation of the radical sectors of the extreme right.

The wages freezing is just a detail when compared to the reaction the current economic model provokes in the armed forces. After all, the Fernando Henrique and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's administrations raped the national sovereignty. It is with that that the elites should start worrying...

Carlos Chagas writes for the Rio's daily Tribuna da Imprensa and is a representative of the Brazilian Press Association, in Brasília. He welcomes your comments at carloschagas@hotmail.com.

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