Wednesday, April 30, 2014

International Worker's Day may change Dilma's tone in pre-campaign

Reproduction
Dilma will address the nation in the
International Worker's Day
It seems the recent bad numbers in the electoral surveys have finally hit the pre-campaign of president Dilma Rousseff.  Yesterday the president already changed the strategy and started attacking her opponents. She said during a speech that she does not believe the country will make a step back (meaning she believes she will be reelected). The tone is expected to be even more direct on her TV speech tomorrow on account of the International Worker's Day. She may address her main opponents Aécio Neves from the social democrat PSDB party and Eduardo Campos from the socialist party PSB stating clearly what her government has conquered to the working class in Brazil.

Today O Estado de S. Paulo published pieces of Dilma's government program draft. The text basically makes a direct reference on the benefits that the Workers' Party (PT) made for the country and tries to frame adversaries proposals as threats for the average Brazilian worker. One example is the adversaries defense of the Central Bank's independency. The text asks: "Independence from whom?", implying that without control the Central Bank would damage the workers income gains. It also refers to the past government of PSDB as a privatist government.

Both strategies proved to work well on the last two campaigns of PT (for Lula's reelection and Dilma's election). The question is if this is going to work again, specially when the government proved to be such a bad manager in the energy sector, and when the gains from the policy of increasing salaries and maintaining jobs are being eroded by an inflationary bubble that threats to damage the purchasing power of the country's lower classes for the years to come.

The attempt to frame adversaries as members of "evil market forces" is also a fallacy easy to deconstruct, because her government poured buckets of money to huge transnational companies using subsidized loans from the national development bank, BNDES.

The change of tone reflects the loss of 6,7 percentual points in Dilma's vote intention, from 43,7% to 37%. The president would be still reelected if the elections were held today, but if the trend keeps going, Dilma may loose.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Brazil approves new internet legislation

AEBr
Brazilian senators vote on Internet Law
The Brazilian Senate has just approved the Civil Landmark of the Internet (Marco Civil da Internet), a subject that will for sure be on the cover of this wednesday Brazilian newspapers. The text of the law ensures net neutrality, even though it also opens the door for content discrimination in specific cases to be determined by presidential decree. The net neutrality -- the legal prohibition of discriminate data flow according to the type of content, such as slowing down Skype connections on mobile internet -- was the most sensitive subject of the law, a subject that now will be probably on the hands of the next Brazilian president to resolve.

The law also ensures the privacy of users and limits the liability of Internet Services Providers in cases of judicial process regarding third party's prejudicial content published online. There is an interesting mention that internet application providers (such as Facebook or Google) should not abuse in the use of private information of users (even if authorized by them). I would not be surprised to see in the future a civil lawsuit against one of the big internet companies in the country.

I'm curious to see how will be the coverage of the main newspapers tomorrow. The first time the text was approved on the Chamber of Deputies I noticed few of the criticism about the limited net neutrality (this I saw later on specialized publications). In fact, both O Globo and Folha were rather optimistic about it. In fact just now (as the subject is only on the online versions of the media, the attentions are focused to the victory of the government in surpassing the opposition maneuvers against the project.

-- update --

I just had a brief discussion with a friend  which was on the government during the public consultations of the internet law project. Basically the reason why they let the details of net neutrality to be determined by presidential decree was in order not to pass a rigid law that would have to be changed in the future due to technological developments. So net neutrality is still there as a principle and a set of rules which will have specific subsets of parameters and exceptions (Many thanks to Guilherme Almeida de Almeida).

As for the media coverage it was pretty modest, compared to the first approval. Since the text was not passed with many changes, newspapers sticked to describing the law and its concepts. Folha published an article from PSDB (opposition) senator Aloysio Nunes Ferreira arguing the law could be improved had the Senate more time to work on it. He said the privacy issue could be better defined, granting more protection to users.

-- end of update --

Catching-up

The Easter week I skipped publishing here was dominated by the Petrobras scandal (the refinery purchase that brought a billionaire loss to the company) and the presidential election forecasts, that again are dimming for Dilma. They both seem to be related, but in fact I hardly believe the average voter will put much weight on what is being done with the biggest company in the country.

On the Petrobras' front the most interesting development is a sort of discrepancy between the declarations of José Sérgio Gabrielli, Petrobras' former CEO and president Dilma Rousseff. Dilma said the Pasadena purchase was a bad business. This Sunday, in an interview to O Estado de S. Paulo, Gabrielli replied saying that Dilma was one of the board members and shared the same responsibility in the purchase. This was at least what O Estado de S. Paulo put in the headlines. I read the whole interview and could see Gabrielli saying the purchase was totally in acceptance with the 2006's context. But the contradiction surely was enough to be replicated by Folha de S. Paulo and O Globo on their monday editions.

Monday, April 7, 2014

Dilma vote intentions keep falling as rumors of Lula's return arise

Ricardo Noblat, columnist for O Globo wrote this monday that Lula and Dilma are waging a secret battle for the right to be the Workers' Party (PT) next candidate to the elections this year. According to Noblat, Lula has always envisioned coming back to the presidential seat (no matter how many times he declared he was done with it)  and that was why he chose Dilma to be his successor, a political nobody until 2011 when she started appearing next to Lula in big cerimonies.

But now that Dilma has become used with power, Lula would have a hard time dissuading her from her rightful reelection, unless she keeps going down the vote intention polls, which is precisely what we are seeing in this year. Last saturday Datafolha (the research institute from Folha de S. Paulo) showed the vote intentions for Dilma went down to 38% from 44% on the previous poll, in a scenario where Aecio Neves (PSDB senator) and Eduardo Campos (PSB, and currently governor of the state of Pernambuco) would be the president's main challengers.

EBC
André Vargas asked for a removal from the vice-presidency
of the Chamber of Deputies after complaints
Truth or not, it seems the situation is getting worse to Dilma every week. Last week Globo Television showed PT deputy André Vargas (that until this monday occupied the vice-presidency of the Camber of Deputies) in what it seemed to be a  lobbying negotiation with a convicted money dealer, Alberto Youssef. The investigation started after Vargas was getting a ride on Youssef private jet. This monday, Vargas asked for a 60 removal from his position as vice-president.

In the World Cup front, the news are not positive also. In Rio, an union from the workers of the constructing business started a strike and stopped the already delayed work for the World Cup and the Olympic Games this monday. In São Paulo the work in the World Cup stadium were stopped last month after the third death of a construction worker on the site. The stadium may be inaugurated in the end of this month.

Bad news for Dilma were again good news for the market. This monday, following the wave of popularity decrease the dolar hit a five month low against the real. Economists heard by O Estado de S. Paulo interpreted this as a sign that investors see a chance of change for better in the Brazilian government -- in a similar reaction to what happened when the president suffer a popularity decrease. Of course the market may be also responding to the 25 basis points increase on the country's interest rates decided by the Brazilian Central Bank on april 3rd.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Dilma's popularity falls, stock market goes up

Last week Dilma's popularity fell considerably. The percentage of people that evaluate positively her government dropped from 43% to 36% during the first quarter of the year. The survey news were picked up by the major newspapers in the country, namely O Globo and Folha de S. Paulo. Latter both newspapers said the slip in the president's approval (that means Dilma's reelection is under threat) was welcomed by the market, given the valuation of the national currency and the positive closure of the São Paulo stock exchange.

Stories about the 50 years of the military coup d'etat continued to be featured in the media. This monday, Dilma Rousseff, herself a victim of torture during the militar dictatorship period, defended the amnesty law (that basically prevented the conviction of military personnel involved in the dictatorship crimes, and was being questioned by the Bar in Brazil). Her past as a leftist militant is a trump she is likely to use again during the campaign. In her speech she addressed the two former presidents both also opponents from the dictatorship: Fernando Henrique Cardoso, whom she called an exiled, and Lula, whom she called a union leader. 

Facebook reproduction
"I don't deserve to be raped", photos like
this were on social media to fight sexism
Dilma also used the internet on monday to address a victim of today's Brazil reminiscent conservatives, the journalist Nana Queiroz, that started last week a social media movement to raise awareness to a survey that showed 65% of Brazilian people believe a woman that has been raped deserved to be so either because she behaved or dressed inappropriately. Nana took a picture naked from the waste up, covering her breasts with a poster saying: I don't deserve to be raped. The campaign went viral, with several women adhering, and taking similar pictures. The problem was that Nana received several threats both from men and women, and decided to remove her page from Facebook. Using her Twitter, Dilma said Nana deserve respect and solidarity.

If in the dictatorship's speech and in the latter social media manifestations Dilma did good, the president's performance on the economic front continues to disappoint. The latest forecasts for inflation, featured in Folha de S. Paulo this Tuesday shows a 40% chance of the price index finishing the year above its 6,5% ceiling. It would be the first time this would happen since 2003, and a very bad sign for a government looking to win back the market. O Globo also featured another Achilles' heel of Dilma, the investigation over corruption in Petrobras, the big oil state company. The preliminary investigations from the company showed no sign of corruption in one of the two cases, the dutch platform supplier SBM bribe to Petrobras employees.