The Greening of Brazil

It is all but guaranteed that Dilma Rouseff, Lula da Silva’s former chief of staff turned delfina, will end October as Brazil’s next president-elect. After winning 47% percent of the national vote Sunday (compared to José Serra’s 33%), Dilma needs only to pick up 3% of the votes received by various third party candidates in round one in order to walk away victorious in an Oct. 31 runoff vote . And yet, that said, much of the talk this morning is not about Ms. Rouseff but about Green Party candidate, Marina Silva, whose surprisingly strong third place finish Sunday has gotten many talking. The Wall Street Journal calls the 52-year-old darling of the environmental movement the “X-factor” on Oct. 31, with both Dilma and Serra aggressively courting the 19% of votes she took in the first round. In the state of Rio de Janeiro, in fact, Silva came in second with 31.2% of the vote; the headline of O Dia Monday morning called Silva’s performance a “Green Tsunami”.

And that hardly appears an overstatement. Silva’s vote total was significantly more than most pre-election polls indicated. [According to MercoPress, most had Silva winning between 7 and 10% of the vote Sunday]. And a cursory look at the success of other Green Parties worldwide indicates that the former rubber tapper’s Sunday finish was one of the – if not the – most successful Green Party run in any major world democracy. [Germany’s Greens, as a point of comparison, won just 10.7% in 2009 elections].

Silva’s strength has led to some out-of-the ordinary environmental talk by Brazil’s two leading candidates. Mr. Serra’s running mate, the young and very conservative Indio de la Costa told the press his “heart is totally environmentalist and Serra's is too” after Sunday’s vote, and analysts say Dilma will no doubt be greening herself in the coming weeks as well. For her part, Ms. Silva called both Dilma and Serra “equally bad” on environmental issues during the campaign. [Silva was Lula da Silva’s environment minister before breaking with the president and the PT in 2008].

For now, Marina Silva says she will take her time in deciding who to support during the Oct. 31 runoff – if anyone. [Sao Paulo’s Folha says it could be 15 days before we hear anything]. Her former allies in the PT may seem the more natural fit, but already, at least one high profile Green Party candidate, defeated Rio gubernatorial candidate, Fernando Gabeira, has thrown his lot in with the Serra camp. Unlike the typical Green Party candidate in Europe or North America, Ms. Silva’s campaign has been animated just as much by her social conservatism as by her environmentalism. A practicing evangelical, many saw her stance against abortion as an important factor in explaining her strong performance Sunday.

In the end, Silva’s impressive showing can likely be chalked up to a combination of factors – her appeal to social conservatives, her environmentalism, as well as recent corruption claims against the PT which made the idea of an “alternative” to the political status quo appealing. Whatever the case may be, it would seem the Green Party’s strong performance is, at the very least, another sign of an increasingly vibrant Brazilian democracy.

To other stories:

· There have been reports about a new prisoner release deal in the works in Cuba over the last few days. And Spain’s El País this morning suggests it could be much larger than expected. “Once the [remaining] 16 opposition members of the “Grupo de los 75” are freed,” the Raul Castro government is “preparing conditions for a new and massive release of political prisoners,” the paper reports. The news comes from the Catholic Church as well as human rights groups, such as Amnesty International. Here is Elizardo Sánchez, of the Comisión Cubana de Derechos Humanos y Reconciliación Nacional, as quoted in the paper:

“Everything indicates that the regime is preparing another massive prisoner release; that it wants to empty its prisons of political prisoners and at last get rid of the problem.”

According to both El País and the Miami Herald, rights groups are working to figure out who exactly will be included on the release list. Initial reports appear to indicate that not just “political prisoners” but also a handful of individuals convicted of “violent” acts could go free. [Three individuals under discussion received life sentences on terrorism charges for plotting to hijack a plane to the United States in 2003 though the attempt was never carried out, says the Herald – as well as three others are accused of a boat hijacking]. Also, from the Herald, news that the US State Dept. has indicated it will allow former Cuban political prisoners and their families – released to Spain in round one of the Catholic Church’s prisoner release deal – to move to the US under a special parole program. “The ex-prisoners' applications for entry will be processed on a case-by-case basis but are expected to take an average of about one month,” a DOS official informs the paper.

· In Chile, a different set of negotiations between dissidents and the government – also being brokered by the Catholic Church – has not come to a complete end yet. At least 10 Mapuche activists say they will continue their hunger strike, reports indicate, awaiting a full repeal of the Pinochet-era anti-terrorist law under which they were being prosecuted.

· In Ecuador, Reuters reports that the pay restructuring law which set off a police insurrection last week went into effect Monday with little protest. “Everything seems to be returning to normal,” police spokesman Richard Ramirez said yesterday. About specifics of the new law, Reuters says the following: “Under the new benefits rules, designed to save money as cash-strapped Ecuador recovers from the global recession, police and soldiers will no longer be paid bonuses when they are promoted or be given gifts at Christmas.” The Economist, meanwhile, says Ecuador’s police forces have “fared fairly well” under Correa’s government. “In a bid to reduce corruption, [Correa] increased their salaries from $700 a month to $1,200. He has also bought them new equipment, including Austrian-made Glock pistols.”

· Also, I have not seen much reporting on this but El Universal reports that UNASUR approved a new “democratic clause” Sunday, intended to prevent future coups and coup attempts. The new measure would include the “immediate isolation” of coup governments by UNASUR members, including the “suspension of trade, air traffic, and energy provisions,” as well as border closings.

· From the New York Times, a report on internal displacement in Haiti that is worth reading in full. “Increasingly, property owners here are seeking to dislodge tent camps, saying they are tired of waiting for the government to resettle the people or for the people to resettle themselves,” the paper writes. The issue is quickly turning into the country’s next major challenge, with humanitarian officials worried that “the evictions could increase conflict, lead to the mushrooming of smaller sites without services and force people into locations that are unsafe.”

· Venezuela is rejecting new claims that it provided weapons training to Basque militants. The accusations come from two suspected ETA members on trial in Spain, says the AP.

· The Inter-American Human Rights Court condemned Mexico Monday for failing to protect two indigenous women who were raped by Mexican soldiers in 2002.

· The LA Times has an editorial calling for a full investigation into the syphilis experiments which were conducted on Guatemalans in the late 1940s. Meanwhile, a very interesting interview with the woman who uncovered the details of those secret experiments, Professor Susan Reverby, at History News Network.

· And finally, back in Brazil. Just how vibrant is Brazilian democracy, you may still be asking? From Reuters:

“[Congressional candidate] Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva, better known by his clown name Tiririca, received more than 1.3 million votes in Sao Paulo state in Brazil's presidential and congressional elections. That was more than double the votes of the second-placed candidate in Brazil's most populous state."

Anyone who has been in Brazil a month of two before elections knows how entertaining election propaganda can be. But Tiririca’s were truly memorable. “What does a congressman do? The truth is I don't know, but vote for me and I'll tell you!” he told viewers. Well, listeners listened it seems, and now Tiririca will be headed to Congress, pending an opposition demand that the clown proves he is, in fact, literate.