With less than a week left to go in the run-off, the 2010 campaign for the Presidency of Brazil has gone through the looking glass. Multiple scandals erupt daily, a blizzard of lies and half-truths shower the landscape, and accusations fly back and forth, each one more sordid and outrageous than the one before.
I have no hope of detailing everything that's happening in a single diary (and no desire to write a series). But I did want to give a summary of some of the most crazy stuff seen yet this year in a campaign that started out with such promise and potential to be utterly boring and conventional.
Follow me over the fold and find out what happens when Rovian tactics head south... way south.
Abortion
First, the issue of abortion. This issue was pushed by a stealth viral campaign on the internet and in some ultraconservative evangelical and Catholic churches, accusing Dilma Rousseff and the PT of supporting the "murder of children." Although Rousseff affirmed on several occasions that she has no intention of changing current abortion law (which permits abortions only in the case of rape, incest, or when the mother's life is at stake), these accusations spread like wildfire, even coming directly from the mouth of Monica Serra, the Chilean-born wife of rival candidate José Serra.
Then, on 11 October, Sheila Canavacci Ribeiro posted on her Facebook page that she had been a student of Monica Serra's, and that during a class in 1992, Serra had spoken with her ballet students that she had aborted a child during the fourth month of pregnancy during the military dictatorship. Sheila was soon engulfed in a firestorm - accused of lying, working for the PT, even of not being a real person. Supporters of Dilma even attacked her, saying that she was smearing Serra's wife in an attempt to tie personal attacks on his family to Dilma's campaign. Her story first appeared in print in the independent newspaper Correio do Brasil, on 13 October.
In an interview given to the paper, she mentioned that she had not been following the campaign at all, had not voted for either Serra nor Dilma in the first round, and that she only mentioned the story after happening to catch part of the debate where Dilma Rousseff mentioned having been accused by Serra's wife of wanting to "kill little children." She said her jaw dropped open in shock (confirmed by her husband), because she couldn't believe that Monica Serra would ever say such a thing, after having confided with her students about her pain and suffering when she felt she had no recourse but to abort so many years ago. However, after searching the internet, Sheila says she found that the statement was true and that she then had to tell her story, which was later confirmed by two other former classmates of Sheila. Sheila continues to claim that at the time she was touched by Monica's story, has always admired her, and never felt she had done anything to be ashamed of in having an abortion, but that she had to speak out because of such a hypocritical political attack.
Whether true or not, the story has served one important purpose - it has absolutely wiped the public discussion of abortion clean out of the picture. Serra's campaign issued a flat denial, and without any physical proof, the story ended there for the traditional media. Of course, were the shoe on the other foot and Dilma had been accused of having an abortion...
The PIG and elections
The acronym "PIG," used to describe the centralized traditional Brazilian media, first appeared on the Internet in 2007. It stands for Partido da Imprensa Golpista, which translates to "Party of the Coup-supporting Press." It alludes to the media as a political party and, not coincidentally, links it to the English word "pig."
Journalist Paulo Henrique Amorim popularized the term after being fired in 2008 from the internet news site iG, allegedly due to "ideological cleansing," and it has become the common term used across the left-leaning Brazilian blogosphere to describe the traditional media, generally considered to include the Globo television network and its subsidiaries (radio stations, newspapers, and magazines), Veja magazine, and the largest São Paulo newspapers, Folha de São Paulo and Estado de São Paulo.
The PIG began to gain power in the 1950s and consolidated it during the military dictatorship of 1964-85, when its principal organs became the official mouthpieces for government propaganda. Today, just three families control almost all of the traditional media of Brazil: Marinho (Globo), Frias (Folha), and Mesquita (Estado).
These interconnected and interwoven organizations all act in ideological lockstep, and expend considerable effort to dig up as many scandals as possible against candidates from the left, while downplaying or covering up scandals from those on the right. Sound familiar? Imagine if Fox News were watched by two-thirds of the viewing audience every night and controlled the largest newspapers and magazines as well, and you can get an idea of what it's like.
The evidence for what they've done in the past is clear and undisputed - the 1993 British documentary "Beyond Citizen Kane" gives a brief summary of the rise and influence of the Globo Network. The film is banned for broadcast in Brazil because of a court injunction (requested by none other than Globo), however a Portuguese-dubbed version has been distributed widely through the Internet.
In fact, many analysts point to the Internet as a key factor in eroding the media monopoly held by the PIG. Journalist Fernando Soares Campos noted in 2009 that Lula would already have been removed by coup were it not for the Internet: "without the Internet, it would have been difficult to elect Lula; if he were elected, he would have been barred from taking office; if he were allowed to take office, he would have been removed easily in a coup. The PIG is very strong, they are Goliath, but the Internet is David."
For any who may have held reservations or doubts, the intentions and power of the PIG were made crystal clear last Tuesday, when the first opinion poll of the week showed Dilma Rousseff moving back ahead by double digits over PSDB rival José Serra (51-39), a result which was confirmed later in the week by two other polling agencies.
The Dossiers of Doom
I've never understand the mania with which the PIG attacks candidates (usually always PT candidates) with accusations that they are "creating dossiers." Maybe it's just my American upbringing, but I've always figured that opposition research is part of politics - a dirty, negative part, but something unfortunately necessary. Newsreaders become positively breathless (and would likely be clutching their pearls were they wearing any) describing how a dossier was being put together against the opposition candidate! A dossier, Lawd have mercy!
For the most part, these accusations seem to generate heat but little light, because the majority of the public neither knows nor cares about political dossiers. But it's one more way the PIG can keep needling the PT (while ignoring the fact that every candidate from every party performs opposition research).
One case that made the rounds earlier in August was that of someone having broken into the bank records of relatives and associates of José Serra in 2009, presumably to gather information for one of the dreaded dossiers. Although the issue was public knowledge for several months, it only exploded into the political debate when Dilma began to open up a large lead over Serra. Serra spent considerable time accusing the PT campaign of breaking into these records, first stating that the illegal action was done by "PT activists" and later that Dilma's campaign itself had paid for and ordered the break-in, a serious criminal charge. Then a few weeks later, in early September, Serra refused to speak of the issue any more, even threatening to walk out of an interview when a journalist asked about it. The media then clammed up completely and said not another word.
What happened? The investigation by the Polícia Federal (the Brazilian analogue to the American FBI) uncovered that the records were broken into at the request of (and paid for by) a journalist from the newspaper Estado de Minas, and were part of a continuing "investigation" of José Serra by that newspaper - a paper strongly linked to then PSDB governor Aécio Neves, at that time a rival of José Serra's for the PSDB nomination for President. The journalist's testimony even revealed that he had began looking into José Serra's records after learning that Serra was mounting his own dossier against Neves in preparation for their nomination showdown, although no media organization dared breath the dreaded "d-word" to refer to this case. With these revelations, the story died as if it had never existed.
Until now... exactly one day after a poll indicated that Dilma Rousseff's lead was growing back into double-digits, the story returned to the front pages of Folha de São Paulo and other papers, noting that the journalist in question, Amaury Ribeiro Jr., had been "linked to Dilma's campaign." The distortion of the facts was so blatant that the Polícia Federal was forced to issue a statement saying that their investigation revealed no such link, precipitating one of the most bizarrely cynical headlines I have yet read, in the paper O Globo: "Investigation links theft (of information) to Dilma, but the Polícia Federal tries to deny it." The tenuous link was made because earlier this year (several months after the act of stealing the information), Ribeiro met with a person who had worked on Dilma's campaign for the nomination. No information was alleged to have been passed, and this person shortly after left the campaign. But that was enough for the PIG to launch into action, spurred by fear of the campaign slipping away, and go so far as to accuse the Polícia Federal themselves of being complicit in the cover-up of a crime. The investigation itself is still ongoing.
This event echoes another, earlier in September, when Veja magazine accused Cid Gomes, candidate for re-election to the office of Governor of Ceará, and his brother Ciro of being under investigation by the Polícia Federal for embezzlement of 300 million reais. At that time, the Polícia Federal was also forced to make a public statement that neither of the Gomes brothers was under any sort of investigation, to which Veja magazine made no response. (Cid Gomes was re-elected in a landslide.)
The Killer Wad of Paper and the Incredible Invisible Tape
Distorting news stories to fit a narrative is simply par for the course for the PIG. But shortly on the heels of the renewed War of the Dossiers and its quick refutation by the police themselves, came another event that strains the mind by its sheer absurdity and audacity.
Last Tuesday, José Serra held a campaign even in the western part of Rio de Janeiro, and he and his entourage were met by PT supporters in the street who held up signs and yelled at him. At some point, altercations erupted between supporters on both sides leading Serra to cancel the event early, claiming to have been hit on the head by a heavy object requiring him to seek hospital care. He called the PT supporters "Nazi shock troops" and their attack "premeditated," blaming their actions on the "violent campaign" being waged by his opponent. Dilma immediately sent out a message of support and called for all violence to stop, claiming that no violent acts had ever been condoned on the part of her campaign. Then the "fun" began...
That evening, the SBT television network (a smaller, independent competitor of Globo), who had been filming the entire campaign event, broadcast video of the object hitting Serra's head, which was revealed to be nothing more than a wadded up piece of paper, which bounced harmlessly away and was ignored by the candidate at the time. Fifteen or 20 minutes later, Serra received a telephone call on his celular, shortly thereafter raising a hand to his head and wincing in pain. At that point, the event was cancelled. This report went off like a bomb, especially on the internet, where the Twitter topics #serrarojas (comparing Serra to the Chilean goalie Rojas, who faked an injury in 1989) and #boladepapelfacts ("ball of paper" facts) exploded in popularity. The video is here.
The violent hordes of Dilma's SS forces had been transformed into one guy throwing a piece of paper in less than 24 hours, and Serra was at the risk of becoming an instant laughingstock... but Globo and its allies would not be foiled so easily. The next day, the story began to circulate that Serra had been struck by a second object (from the grassy knoll??) that SBT had not captured on video, and SBT was accused of having left this out in order to distort their reporting of the event. SBT responded saying that they had gone over all of their video, and the ball of paper was the only object which had hit Serra.
Globo the next evening responded with a 10-minute (yes, 10 full minutes) report that purported to show this mysterious second object, captured on a single frame of a grainy, shaky, cell-phone camera image (provided, naturally, by a reporter from Folha de São Paulo). Just a single frame of video, because apparently this mysterious object did not actually travel in hitting Serra and did not rebound (or was, in fact, completely invisible). If this object existed, it also made no serious impact, as Serra did not react to it in the frames of video which came afterward. They called in a supposed expert (with a dubious history) to detail the outline of the object on this single frame and then categorically declare that it was a roll of scotch tape. Well... OK, then.
If anyone wants to see the video frames, they are here.
In all of this minutiae, the larger issue was lost, that of the actual confrontation itself. A fair argument could be made that the supporters of PT were in the wrong to attempt to impede Serra's marchers, even were it done completely peacefully (and the counter-charge that he intentionally marched in an area with strong anti-PSDB feelings as a deliberate provocation also has some merit). But all this was lost in the silliness of the ball of paper and magical roll of tape. Dilma commented that someone had tried to hit her with a water balloon at a campaign event, but that she didn't make a big case out of it or call the perpetrator a Nazi acting deliberately for her opponent's campaign.
Attacking the Polls
When you are gaining in the polls, they are gospel. When you're dropping, they're shit. In the first two weeks following the first round, the gap between Dilma and Serra narrowed all the way down to 5-6 points, which Serra's campaign trumpeted as a "statistical tie." Then, last week, Vox Populi pinned the lead for Dilma as 51-39. The leader of the PSDB called the poll "shameless" and accused Vox Populi of falsifying their poll and of having been bought off by the PT. A couple of days later, Rede Globo and Folha de São Paulo released polls (conducted by the polling agencies Ibope and Datafolha, respectively) showing the lead as 51-40 and 50-40, lending support to the earlier poll by Vox Populi. Having already stepped in it, Serra's campaign went even further, declaring that there was a "crisis in the polls" and that they were all getting it wrong. In for a penny, in for a pound.
But there's more to this than just trying to keep supporters motivated and working for the campaign... there's big money involved. During the first round, the PSDB candidate for governor of Paraná, Beto Richa, went one step further and actually went to court to stop the public release of polling data in his state! He is now coordinating the current Serra strategy of attacking the polls. Richa noted that the large lead he had enjoyed in early public polling was shrinking fast in the campaign's internal polling, so he went to court to prevent the release of any other public polls during the final stretch of the campaign, and a sympathetic court enforced the ban. According to Richa, this was essential because of the local support of mayors across the state. If they had seen the campaign as struggling or failing, they would have ceased local fundraising efforts and some of them may even have switched sides if they thought the wind was blowing the other way. In the end, the court finally allowed the polls to be released just before election day, but the strategy worked well enough that Richa kept the campaign's coffers filled and pulled out a 52-46 win (the blocked poll had shown a 45-45 tie).
Serra's campaign is unlikely to find a judge sympathetic enough to block the release of polls nationwide, but they are doing whatever they can to discredit any and all of the public polling, and are planning this week to release an "internal poll" to prove that the race is actually neck-and-neck.
What's next?
No one can say for sure what new October surprise will appear in the next five days, but there are some hints: Folha de São Paulo has been crazy to get their hands on the file the military dictatorship created about Dilma Rousseff's past activities with the VAR Palmares resistance group (for which she was imprisoned and tortured in the 1970s). Globo and Veja are pushing new and strange twists to the saga of the dossiers almost daily, and the Erenice Guerra scandal continues to percolate. I'm sure there are a few more in the vault waiting to be sprung on the public, as well. It's truly amazing how scandals involving the PT are all discovered and exposed in giant "news dumps" at precise four-year intervals...must be some sort of coincidence.
And that doesn't even get into the underhanded tactics of robocalling, hacking of campaign sites and blogs, pamphleteering, and other standard weapons from the Rovian arsenal. It's all piling on like crazy... The second-round vote is this Sunday, 31 October, and it cannot come soon enough!