The relative level of cordiality seen in the presidential elections of 2002 and 2006 is over. Buried under an onslaught of mud-slinging in the final weeks of September, PT candidate Dilma Rousseff was only able to hold on to 47% of the vote in the first round, provoking a run-off with PSDB rival José Serra scheduled for October 31.
This diary will look at the changes in the campaigns over the last month and the landscape of what is shaping up to be the dirtiest political battle since 1989 (Collor vs. Lula), and possibly since the Coup of '64. The role of the media and the unprecedented involvement of the religious right have been key factors contributing to this changed political scenario.
Negative campaigning
I've commented in the past, and even during this year's campaign (earlier on), about the relative lack of negative campaigning in Brazil, as compared to the States. There are attack ads, but they are generally more issues-related than personal and lack the over-the-top nastiness that I had become familiar with in the US. In my experience watching Brazilian campaigns (2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008), negative ads were rarely used because they rarely worked... they tended to take more points away from whoever ran the ad than from their target.
This was the principal theme invoked by João Santana, head of Dilma Rousseff's ad campaign, as September wore on and the attacks increased from all sides (the rightwing media, Serra himself, and a group of ultra-conservative religious leaders): Dilma would not go on the attack, would remain above the fray, and the attacks would rebound on her opponents. Early in the month, Dilma's polling numbers hit a high of 56%, which then began to slowly erode. By the final week, these numbers were down to a range of 49%-51%, which began to put the possibility of first-round victory in doubt.
The strategy failed because of a third candidate. The attacks had slowly weakened support for Dilma, but at the same time had done little to increase José Serra's numbers. But Marina Silva was also in the running, and was able to double her numbers from 10% to almost 20% in the final week, mostly by adding voters who found Serra too negative, but were also having doubts about Dilma.
Now, the conventional wisdom has been turned on its head. Negative campaigning did work, and it has only increased exponentially following the first-round voting on October 3. Looking for a new strategy, Dilma Rousseff's campaign has now decided to face the attacks head on and launch some of her own. And Serra has only stepped up his attacks to a new level. It has already reached such a level that Marina Silva has delayed her decision on whom to support in the second round until this coming Sunday (October 17), and may end up not taking any side at all.
The strategy involves a high degree of risk. There is the distinct danger that Marina's voters, turned away by Serra's negativity, will also be turned away from the new "assertive Dilma." If they are fed up with both candidates, where will they go? Will they start to see Serra as a victim instead of an accuser? Will they vote null? José Eduardo Dutra, president of the Workers' Party (PT), countered with the idea that the truly risky strategy was "taking punches and never responding to them." I'm sure John Kerry can speak to that...
The role of the media
The rightwing media in Brazil (TV Globo, Folha de São Paulo, Estadão, Veja magazine, among others) have always acted in support of the elite. They were the ones who cheerled the Coup of 1964 and whitewashed the sins of two decades of repression and torture. Since that time, they have unabashedly promoted rightwing candidates and piled denigration and scorn on the left, even going so far as to distort news stories (or cover them up) to fit their narrative. They created Fernando Collor de Mello and campaigned fiercely on his behalf in 1989 to keep Lula from gaining the presidency.
In a diary just a few weeks ago, I commented on the weakening power of the media and how it no longer could control the outcome of elections as it had in the past. The reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. In a campaign with strong echoes of Obama in 2008, Dilma Rousseff has been excoriated as "an unknown candidate" with a "hidden past" who wants to create a "Marxist-communist dictatorship" and "destroy the freedom of the press." One has to go back to 1989 to find a media campaign as dirty as this, and before that to 1964 when João Goulart was painted as an atheist and a Soviet puppet, before being removed from office by the military.
While not sufficient in and of itself to defeat the PT and Dilma, this media campaign was able to erode her support around the margins. Since she fell short of a majority by only 3%, it may have, in fact, been decisive. But there's more...
The religious right
The most ominous portent of the 2010 elections is something heretofore unheard of in Brazil: the unholy alliance of the ultra-conservative religious rightwing with the elitist economic rightwing. In the US, this piggy-backing of economic issues on top of religious issues has been taken for granted since at least the early 1980s, when the Republican party needed to find a wedge to fracture low-income voters away from the broad Democratic coalition. But it's not something that contemporary Brazil has had to deal with. The religious conservatives have been involved in politics, but not in any fixed alignment with either the left or the right. Many issues on which the left is strong (social equality, education for the poor, etc.) contain a strong religious dimension. A religious conservative might find it quite comfortable to support socialist economic policies.
Now, in the most cynical of moves in an already unscrupulous campaign, the religious right has been mobilized against the PT, with viral internet campaigns as well as sermons from the pulpit - railing against the evils of abortion, homosexual marriage, and that bugaboo from the Cold War - "godless communism." On the Internet, Dilma has been called an atheist, a baby-killer, a lesbian, and a terrorist. At the heart of this campaign lie both Serra's unknown young vice-presidential candidate Indio da Costa, a sort of male Sarah Palin, who had previously called the PT "narcoterrorists," as well as his Chilean-born wife, Monica Serra, who claimed recently that Dilma wants to "kill little children." All of this, of course, with the background that abortion is illegal in Brazil except in cases of rape, incest, and where the life of the mother is in danger... and both the left and the right have pushed for decriminalization! But now, the campaign is all about "family values" as a code word for religiosity...
The parallels between this campaign and those of the Republican Party in recent decades puts the fingerprints of foreign manipulation all over the PSDB. Religiosity has not been used as a political wedge in Brazil since the 1960s... and that was precisely the time when the USA was directly manipulating Brazilian politics for Cold War gain. I don't think this is a coincidence.
After eight years of Lula, the rightwing is seeing its one chance to regain power, and it is throwing every bit of mud it can. If it succeeds, it will prove the efficacy of dirty campaigning... which will only increase in elections to come. And what if it falls short? Elections for Congress have only increased the power of the PT and the left as a whole. If the presidency, too, is denied to the right... will they return to their old ways? Is a repeat of 1964 at hand? The unbridled ferocity of the current campaign of defamation certainly suggests it is not impossible.