Professor Manuel Castells (left), of Sociology and City and Regional Planning, and Professor Harley Shaiken, Education and Geography and Chair of the Center, discussed the upcoming runoff election in Brazil. This election may very well produce the first Brazilian president from a left-leaning political party, in Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who faces Jose Serra in the runoff.

Jessica Rich, Political Science

In the Oct. 10th discussion of the upcoming Brazilian presidential runoff
election, UC Berkeley professors Manuel Castells and Harley Shaiken predicted a historic and contentious win for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Worker’s Party candidate.

Shaiken emphasized that a Lula win will mark a major change in Brazilian politics, with implications for the entire Western Hemisphere. Major possibilities include a redefinition of the international debate in areas such as trade, labor and environmental standards. However, Castells argued that a Lula victory may be more contentious than the polling data suggest, citing President Cardoso’s new involvement in the campaign in favor of the governing party candidate, José Serra. Yet, less than a week before the second-round elections the polling data shows Lula with a commanding lead over Serra.

In the face of a seemingly imminent victory, Lula’s next hurdle is to build a governing coalition, a task complicated by several domestic factors. His overarching challenge, as both Castells and Shaiken emphasized, is to reconcile the need to stabilize the market with the concurrent demand for social reform. Shaiken pointed out that Brazil is suffering from domestic economic shakiness, a weaker global economy and capital flight as investors react to the emergence of a leftist leader. These three conditions make it essential to forge a positive relationship with the IMF; a number of behind-the-scenes negotiations will likely occur before Lula officially takes office early next year.

Lula also cannot afford to delay implementing his promised social reforms. Castells pointed out that Brazil is suffering from a tear in its social fabric. Although empirically poverty has decreased in the past decade, many of the problems associated with it have intensified. Urban violence, prison riots, and forced strikes have increased in frequency, as evidenced by “Black Monday” in which Rio’s jailed gang leaders ordered businesses, schools, and banks to close on Sept. 30 to show solidarity with their protest for better prison living conditions. These factors, on top of the fact that both Lula and his Worker’s Party have based their campaigns heavily on social issues, suggest that the Brazilian electorate will have less patience to wait for social reforms with Lula than they did with his predecessor.

Furthermore, Lula’s Worker’s Party (PT) holds a mere 17% and 17.7%, respectively, in Brazil’s fractious Senate and Chamber of Deputies. These numbers point to the need to build a broad-based political coalition. However, divisiveness in the legislature adds to the difficulty of building a working social coalition. Lula’s major challenge is to build a coalition in Congress that will support his less popular economic reforms so that he may implement his social reforms without frightening off investors.

Shaiken argued that if Lula succeeds in building workable social and political coalitions, a Lula victory will mark not only a major symbolic change, but also a substantive change in Brazilian politics, whose impact will reverberate throughout the Americas. More specifically, Brazil could redefine the debate on globalization, especially regarding labor and environmental standards.

The Lula administration’s position on labor and the environment will depend on the stance it takes toward stabilizing the international financial markets. This in turn will be an outcome of Lula’s coalition-building strategy. The terms of a coalition will be defined in the next few weeks, and the outcome will be telling. It will establish not only Lula’s possibilities for building a strong base of support, but also the priority he gives his social agenda in the face of political and economic difficulties.

Professor Castells