Brasil: Send In The Clowns

RAZIL

Send in the Clowns

Last week, Brazil’s embattled president, Michel Temer, officially dropped out of the nation’s presidential election in October.

Temer, who took over the post in 2016 after President Dilma Rousseff was ousted on charges of tampering with the federal budget, isn’t the only one to step out of the ring in what Bloomberghas called a “presidential circus colorful even by Brazilian standards.”

Newcomers like a Hollywood plastic surgeon of reality-show fame, a former Supreme Court justice, and a millionaire publicist-turned-lounge-singer have all dropped out, too.

And the current front-runner, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has been jailed on charges of corruption, effectively making him ineligible to run.

With other left-wing politicians languishing in the polls under the scandals that have plagued party heads, the contest is likely to come down to a few centrist candidates, and firebrand right-wing politician Jair Bolsonaro. He, by the way, once said that the descendants of Brazilian slaves “are not even good for breeding anymore.”

The unpredictable political field has made markets uneasy. Investors worry that none of the contenders will be able to curb corruption and address the economic downturn, security problems and poverty that have troubled Brazil since its worst recession in history in 2015.

According to one recent survey of government data, the number of Brazilians living in “extreme poverty,” or on less than $1.90 per day, increased last year by 11.2 percent. In Sao Paulo, extreme poverty increased by 35 percent.

An Associated Press report about a deadly fire in a 25-floor building in Sao Paulo’s old downtown told the story of hosts of families occupying dilapidated structures alongside drug addicts and the city’s homeless. Efforts to renovate aging and unsafe infrastructure have been slow going.

Meanwhile, soaring fuel prices have led to trucker strikes around the country, prompting widespread food and fuel shortages.

That has cast the government in an even worse light, but candidates are unsure where to stand on the issue and divided on how to reform the economy: While many are calling for free markets due to the corruption scandals involving state-owned enterprises in the past, others worry how such firms will fare on the open market.

With so many acts occurring simultaneously in this political circus, the Financial Times reported that Brazil’s middle-class communities, lifted out of poverty by Lula’s generous cash subsidies to families in need, could decide the outcome of the election.

But in a country untrusting of elected officials after a string of scandals over the past few years, the right ringmaster for the job is anybody’s guess.