Brazzil
Politics
April 2003
Lula has a lot to apologize for. Instead of giving Brazil a shiny, new economic model, he simply warmed up former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's old one.
After eight years of attacking Cardoso's proposals to reform social security and taxes, he conceded that Cardoso was right after all. He announced a "Zero Hunger" campaign modeled on the American food stamp program, without mentioning that the previous administration under Cardoso had already instituted innovative anti-hunger and anti-poverty programs. In all the key policy areas—land reform, environmental protection, affirmative action, and foreign policy—Lula's policies are almost indistinguishable from those introduced by Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
This may mean that Brazil has finally matured to the Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum stage of party politics, with a broad consensus on the major issues. No one wins an election by praising the other side, and Cardoso's popularity was so low that even his own party's candidate gave him only grudging recognition. Cardoso and Lula are old friends, going back to the long struggle against the military regime. They have similar goals for Brazil, and they are practical men who have no desire to go down in glorious defense of impossible dreams. After eight years in office, Cardoso left Brazil significantly better off than he found it. Lula will be doing well if he can say the same in four or eight years.
If this were merely a private matter between friends, there would be little need for an apology. They both understand political rhetoric, and Lula has expressed his appreciation of Cardoso's help in the transition. But a public apology would be good for the country. Not so much to correct the historical record, but to help Brazilians understand what happened to Lula's vision of a new economic and social model that would transform the country.
All through the campaign, Cardoso was frustrated because he could never pin Lula down on policy issues. Lula said he was against what Cardoso was doing, but he never explained what he would do instead. Would he renationalize industry or restructure the debt? How would he lower interest rates without increasing the debt and inflation? How would he increase salaries without increasing inflation? How would he implement and subsidize a more rapid land reform? In response to these hard policy questions, Lula just said that he would get together with the interested parties and negotiate. He never said what his own position would be.
Lula won the election without ever really answering Cardoso's questions. People were content to vote for images, without knowing exactly what policies would be used to implement them. The Workers Party's campaign centered on a meaningless slogan: "Another Brazil is Possible." Of course, many other Brazils are possible. And many of them would be worse rather than the one we have now. Brazil could rally around a populist demagogue like Venezuela or default on its debts like Argentina. A few in the leftover left would like Brazil to be a Marxist dictatorship like Cuba or North Korea. Almost everyone would like Brazil to be more like Sweden, but that will take a long time.
The question is not whether another Brazil is possible, but which of the many possible Brazils is most feasible. In my view, the best possibility for Brazil is to model itself on Chile. I don't mean the Chile of Allende or the Chile of Pinochet, but the democratic socialist Chile of the last fifteen years. Chile has cut poverty in half while raising everyone's standard of living and protecting human rights and democratic freedoms. Brazil could do the same. There is no great secret to Chile's success. It was achieved through four main policies:
· Working hard to maintain a political consensus, including sending important bills to the opposition parties for advice and consent;
· Reducing government expenditures so as to maintain a budget surplus and cut inflation;
· Increasing taxes to fund higher spending on education, health, youth training and housing for the poor;
· Greatly increasing the investment rate, including direct foreign investment;
This is more or less what Fernando Henrique Cardoso tried to do, and Lula is trying to do it even better. Brazil started down the right road ten years ago with the Real Plan. It made progress down that road, but it didn't get as far as it hoped. Lula hopes to go farther down the same road, and he will need all the help he can get. He will need people to be patient when he encounters roadblocks and detours along the way.
Fernando Henrique was less popular than Lula primarily because he told people exactly what he was doing. Lula won the popularity contest by offering vague promises and utopian visions. This is very much in the tradition of Latin American politics, and it certainly worked in the election. But it can be a recipe for disaster when people become disillusioned because the promises cannot be realized.
A public apology to FHC would correct the false impression that Lula has a revolutionary new model for Brazil—and the illusion that Brazil needs one.
This article was originally written for and published by InfoBrazil—www.infobrazil.com
Ted Goertzel, Ph.D. is Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University in Camden, NJ. He is the author of a biography of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, available in English and in Portuguese. He can be contacted at goertzel@camden.rutgers.edu and his WEB page can be found at http://goertzel.org/ted