Econ_Sep_22

The Economist

September 22nd 2018

Y 9.00am on September 6th a crowd

has appeared outside FábioGaia’s one-

storeyhouse inMurici, a town surrounded

by sugar-cane fields. The councilman at-

tends to a stream of constituents who

proffer crumpled bits of paper: prescrip-

tions, receipts for ultrasound scans and

electricity bills. It is a month before Brazil’s

general election, so he promises to pay

them all. “We go door to door with our

electoral programme, but people askwhat

we have to give,” saysMrGaia,who is cam-

paigning for candidates from the conserva-

tive Progressive Party (

). “Ifwe don’t, the

other guyswill.”

The other guys are the Calheiros clan,

ranchers from Murici who have domin-

ated politics in Alagoas, a poor state in

north-eastern Brazil, for more than three

decades. Their chief, Renan Calheiros, is a

three-time senator who belongs to the

country’s largest party, the BrazilianDemo-

cratic Movement (

MDB

). His son is the go-

vernor, his brother is a state legislator, his

nephewisMurici’smayor and his sister-in-

law runs the town’s social-assistance cen-

tre. In the weeks before the elections,

whose first round takes place on October

7th, the centre is distributing sacks of food.

This is how politics works in much of

Brazil. Themoney that flows into party cof-

fers flows out in the form of handouts or

vote-buying. The going rate in Alagoas is

said to be 100 reais ($25). While vote-buy-

ing is rarer in richer places, Alagoas’s cash-

fed web of political alliances has equiva-

lents in other parts of the country.

No dynasty has played the game better

than the Calheiroses. In the previous na-

tional election, in 2014, the

MDB

inAlagoas

was the party’s fourth-biggest fund-raiser,

even though, by population, the state

ranks 17th. This helped Mr Calheiros to be-

come justice minister and president of the

senate under three administrations. To

fight the forthcoming election the family

has assembled a coalition of 19 parties, the

biggest state-level alliance.

Nearly all of Alagoas’s 102 mayors back

the Calheiros clan. They count on the fam-

ily to extract money from the federal gov-

ernment for roads, hospitals and other pro-

jects, whichwill help themwin re-election

when their turn comes (in 2020 formunici-

pal offices). “Renan has perfect domina-

tion on a local level,” says Geraldo de Ma-

jella, a historian ofAlagoas.

Despite the largesse, Murici remains

poor. Just a tenth of its residents have for-

mal jobs; the mayor’s office is the biggest

employer. The sugar-cane plantations pro-

vide seasonal work. More than half the

town’s inhabitants get welfare benefits

from the federal government.

The pursuit of politics as usual in Mur-

ici and places like it is one reason that next

month’s general election is anything but

ordinary. The front-runner in the presiden-

tial race is Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing for-

mer army captain who rails against con-

ventional politics, praises dictators and

has gun-slinging notions of how to fight

crime. After a lunatic knifed him at a rally

on September 6th, he is campaigning from

a hospital bed. Regardless, he is widely ex-

pected to enter a run-off vote, which

would be held onOctober 28th (see chart).

The other dominating personality is

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a left-wing former

president who is in jail after being convict-

ed of corruption. He led the presidential

race until August 31st, when Brazil’s top

electoral court disqualified him from run-

ning. He remains the country’smost popu-

The noise from Brazil

MURICI

Nextmonth’s presidential election could save LatinAmerica’s biggest democracy,

or sabotage it

Briefing

Latin America

Jairborne

Sources: National polls;

The Economist

Brazil, presidential election voting intention*, %

Selected candidates

August

September

2018

Haddad

(PT)

Gomes

(PDT)

Silva

(REDE)

Meirelles

(MDB)

Alckmin

(PSDB)

Bolsonaro

stabbed

*Aug 8th-Sep 19th 2018

Lula

disqualified.

Haddad named

PT candidate

Bolsonaro

(PSL)