With 99% of the votes counted, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party has suffered a frustrating defeat in the second round of voting in the mayoral elections that took place this weekend in country’s key population centres.
In Brazil’s largest city Sao Paulo the incumbent Mayor Gilberto Kassab (with Jose Serra, right), who trailed in third place in the opinion polls as little as two months ago, repelled a strong challenge from former Mayor and Tourism Minister Marta Suplicy by a surprisingly large margin of 61% to 39%. Lula visited the city several times in the last few weeks in support of Suplicy, lending his name and image to her campaign posters and television advertisements.
Opposition candidates also won in the third-largest city Belo Horizonte and large population centres of Salvador, Porto Alegre, Florianopolis, Sao Luis and Cuiaba - the centrist PMDB (Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro) winning most of these contests.
The result in the city of Rio de Janeiro marked the only real high point for the centre-left with the pro-business (and centre-right backed) Green Party candidate Fernando Gabeira who abandoned Lula's Worker's Party in 2002 in disgust at its involvement in high-profile corruption scandals and links with the radical far-left losing by a nail-biting margin of 50.8% to 49.2% to Lula's favoured candidate Eduardo Paes. Gabeira polled more than 70% of the vote in the prosperous Zona Sul area of the city (home to the famous Copacabana and Ipanema beaches and the Botanical Gardens) but was overwhelmed by support for Paes in the city's poorer suburbs.
With their plentiful federal funding streams enshrined in the country’s constitution, Brazilian mayors exercise almost unrivalled power over justice, health, education, transportation and welfare provision in their cities and serve as the most powerful opposition voices to any incumbent government.
In the first round of voting only weeks ago Lula’s Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) won nearly 60% of the small town mayoralties yet of the eleven largest cities polled over the weekend outspokenly pro-Lula candidates triumphed in only three impoverished industrial cities in the north of the country - Macapa, Belem and Manaus. Marta Suplicy’s defeat in Sao Paulo has arguably robbed the party of its best-known possible candidate to replace Lula, who must leave office on January 1st 2011.
Make no mistake; this election does not represent a rejection of the policies of the Lula government, nor should it be seen as a referendum on the President's personal popularity (his approval ratings remain comfortable above 65%).
If anything, it represents the failure of Brazil's centre left to rejuvenate itself beyond the star power of the man who carried the party's torch at the 1989, 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2006 Presidential elections. Where PT candidates were in strong contention in this election, they were often political relics such as Suplicy and in several key states the party failed to record support beyond single digits.
The real winner of the election, despite his name not even being on the ballot, was Sao Paulo Governor and 2002 Presidential candidate Jose Serra.
One month ago, Serra's chief rival for the 2010 Presidential nomination, 2006 nominee Geraldo Alckmin suffered a humiliating third place loss to Kassab and Suplicy in the first round of the Sao Paulo mayoral election, effectively removing him from serious contention. Serra campaigned strongly for Kassab. On the same day, the political capital of his other leading rival for the nomination, retiring Minas Gerais Governor Aecio Neves took a severe battering as electors comprehensively rejected his hand-picked successor at the ballot box.
Today's results leave Serra assured of the absolute support of his coalition and lacking in an obvious, high-profile opponent from the centre-left. Brazil's centre-right have every reason to be optimistic as they look towards 2010.
