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Author Topic: Like most female candidates in Brazil, congressman's ex-wife loses
Wilf Day
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posted 07 October 2006 11:19 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The prospect of a candidate whose leading slogan consists of "Vote For Me - I'm his Ex" beating an experienced incumbent makes for one unique and interesting race.
quote:
Caldeira first struck back against her ex politically during national televised congressional hearings last year about the alleged political slush fund, when she stepped forward to testify of personally seeing her ex-husband, Costa, hiding stacks of cash in his secret safe.

Costa testified that the funds were supposedly to finance the political campaign for the second round of presidential elections, a version that the panel handling the investigation, The Chamber of Deputies Ethics Council, found implausible.

Facing impeachment, Costa had little choice but to resign. Now he is seeking another four year term against the most unlikely of opponents. In fact, his ex-wife has become his chief opposition for the seat and continuation of a 14-year political career.

Caldeira, the daughter of an old money real estate baron, who studied in Europe is facing Costa, her ex-husband, son of a provincial mayor, who grew up in Brazilian politics, with great odds against her.

She lacks his fund-raising ability, political experience and connections. But that hasn't stopped her from making herself known. She led a group of protestors armed with brooms and buckets in cleaning up Liberal Party headquarters, symbolically at least in Costa's own home town of Mogi das Cruzes.

She is frequently seen campaigning and handing out fliers from her 1984 Volkswagon motor home, covered with her slogan Tenho Atitude and blasting her campaign theme song from a speaker system, when it works.

The van is frequently plagued with mechanical difficulties which inhibits travel, let alone blaring the music. Her ex, on the other hand, is running what is reportedly one of the best financed congressional campaigns in the country.

Even Costa's reputation for heavy gambling, corruption, and a temperamental personality - all aided by the testimony of Caldeira herself, of course - does not seem to deter voters. There are also those who testify of Costa's caring for his constituents, such as the adolescent he helped get treatment at a top hospital after an accident. But it did lead to the invitation from the Green Party to run against her ex, candidate for the Liberal Party.

Given the Brazilian system of proportional representation, whereby each party gets a quota of congressional seats, the two could wind up serving together in Congress.

This votes-for-cash scandal has dominated the politics of Brazil over the past year and currently threatens to bring down the government of President Lula.

The votes for cash scandal, known as the Payoff CPI (CPI do mensalão), began on June 6, 2005, when a Brazilian Congressional deputy, named Roberto Jefferson, told daily Folha de S. Paulo that Lula's PT party had paid a number of congressmen 30,000 reais (about US$ 13,000) a month to vote favorably for the party's legislation. The end result was a ballooning scandal during which many congressmen, including Costa, resigned or were fired.

At the heart of this race lie core questions faced by Brazilian voters: Does political corruption really matter? Does honesty matter in Brazilian politics? So far, polls seem to show the electorate hardly cares.



They didn't, at least in São Paulo:
The centre-left Liberal Party elected 3 of São Paulo's 70 deputies in 2002, while the Green Party elected only 2. This time the Liberals slipped to 2, while the Greens jumped to 5.

But Brazil has an open list PR system, where you vote for your one favourite candidate and your party. Not many São Paulo Green voters made their new convert their choice. They gave 1,442,429 votes to the Green Party for Congress in São Paulo. The five who won -- all male -- got 60,407 votes, 56,481, 48,749, 43,652, and 42,173. The unfortunate Maria Cristina Mendes Caldeira got a humiliating 1,773 votes. Meanwhile, the Liberal Party got only 668,164 votes, earning only two São Paulo seats, but the second of the two was -- Valdemar Costa Neto, with 104,157 votes.

Of São Paulo's 70 deputies, 3 are women. Luiza Erundina is a marxist who was São Paulo's mayor from 1989 to 1992 as a member of Lula's PT, then a federal deputy from São Paulo who switched to the Socialist Party in 1997, and was easily re-elected as the 2nd of the 4 PSB deputies (10th overall) with 195,886 votes. Janete Pietá is a newly elected PT deputy whose husband is a PT mayor in a São Paulo suburb, and got a respectable 116,865 votes, standing 8th of the 14 PT deputies. Aline Correa is a conservative PP member who got only 11,132 votes, elected on the coattails of Paulo Maluf.

The left in Brazil is not happy with their system. Many would prefer the German system.

The curious results Brazil's system produces can be shown in São Paulo by the Christian Labour Party (PTC), which got only 7,845 votes there in 2002. This time it got 527,373 votes, earning two deputies, thanks to "Clodovil" a self-professed gay, who once was a renowned Brazilian clothes designer turned into a TV show host, who got 493,951 personal votes.

Clodovil Hernandes, 70, who now is just a shadow of brighter times, decided to become a House representative and ended up getting quite an impressive vote.

quote:
He got the third largest voting in the state of São Paulo. With the 493 thousand votes he won, Clô, as he is often called, was able not only to elect himself, but also the military police colonel, Jairo Paes de Lira, from his own party, the unknown PTC (Partido Trabalhista Cristão - Christian Labor Party).

Ironically, the man he helped win is a right-wing hardliner who defends death penalty and is against marriage for gays.



Paes de Lira got only 6,673 personal votes.

[ 11 October 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 08 October 2006 09:34 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A small silver lining for Brazilian women in politics: women won half the eight seats in Congress from little Amapa, its northernmost state between the Amazon and French Guyana.

But the parties and local coalitions they represent give me a headache: no wonder democratic reformers (especially the left) want to strengthen their party system.

There are, of course, lessons for Canada in the following story: look what happens when there are only eight seats in a district. A high threshold: it forces parties to make weird alliances. That's why a Mixed Member Proportional system needs either jurisdiction-wide proportionality with a low threshold like 4%, or large regions of about 25 MPs each (which doesn't work outside Toronto and Montreal). STV is a partial solution: let them all run, and let the voters make the coalitions through their second preferences. Good theory, but in practice, smaller parties will be scared they will all drop first, and will still defer to an alliance if they have no hope of winning a seat in a small (five to eight) district.

1. Janete Capiberibe, PSB (Socialist Party) was a member of the PMDB, the broad democratic coalition that helped end military rule (1980-1987), and then joined the PSB. Simple. The PSB earned one of the eight seats, and she was by far its strongest candidate.

2. Prof. Dalva Figueredo (PT, Lula's party), a former state governor, representing a local coalition of the PT, the Liberal Party and the Communist Party. With 60,020 votes for the three parties, 21% of the vote, it won two seats; its second strongest candidate was a male Communist.

3. Fatima Pelaes, of the centrist PMDB. Four years ago she was the conservative PSDB candidate for governor. It won two seats; its second strongest was a man.

4. Lucenira Pimentel of the PPS (Peoples' Socialist Party, ex-communist), wife of the mayor of Amapa (who is a PT member), running for a local coalition called "Development with dignity" that includes the PPS, PSDB, PFL (the other main conservative party), the PTB (a centrist "labour" party) and four minor parties. It won two seats; its second strongest was a PFL man.

(The eighth seat was won by a man from the moderate-left PDT (Democratic Labour party), representing a local coalition called "Stronger Amapa" of the PDT, the conservative PP, the Green Party, and two minor parties.)

Brazil keep facing corruption scandals where politicians are bribed to switch parties. I don't understand; how can you tell what party they're in in the first place?

That's just what happened in BC until they entered the era of party politics back around . . (was it 1906?)

[ 08 October 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
jrootham
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posted 08 October 2006 12:54 PM      Profile for jrootham     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Outside of the PT, you can't. Many of the parties have voting records with an average number of votes on opposite sides of the issues close to 50%.

Probably the weakest party system in the world.


From: Toronto | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 11 October 2006 01:23 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
"Manuela" is her sole name on the ballot. Manuela d'Ávila, a 25-year-old journalist and sociology student, was elected as a Communist Party deputy with the highest number of votes in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, on a ticket in alliance with Lula's PT (Workers' Party).

The alliance won 8 of the 31 seats from Rio Grande do Sul, including 39-year-old Maria do Rosário of Porto Alegre, re-elected for the PT. Plus 6 PT men.

Also re-elected was 35-year-old Luciana Genro who was elected as a PT deputy four years ago, but helped found the new further-left PSOL which won one of the 31 seats.

That leaves 28 males from Rio Grande do Sul.

Women's representation has stalled.

Only 45 women were elected to the Chamber of Deputies, just a few more than the 42 who were elected in the previous elections, in 2002. Women's participation thus rose from 8.19 to 8.77 percent.

[ 11 October 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Kevin_Laddle
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posted 11 October 2006 06:18 AM      Profile for Kevin_Laddle   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 

From: ISRAEL IS A TERRORIST STATE. ASK THE FAMILIES OF THE QANA MASSACRE VICTIMS. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 11 October 2006 08:36 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Lula's PT elected the most women. But the woman with the most votes was Manuela D'Ávila, mentioned above, with 271,939 personal votes.

The PT elected 7 women representatives. The socialist PSB (who also support Lula), 6; the communist PCdoB (who also support Lula), 4; the centrist PMDB, 9; the conservative PFL, 4; the conservative PP, 3; the conservative PSDB, 2; the PPS 2; the leftist PDT 1; the far-left PSOL 1; the liberal PL 1; the PTC 1; and far-right Prona 1. The Greens (PV) and the PTB elected no women. In the Senate (half of which were elected this time) the PT elected 5, the PFL 4, the PSDB 2, and the PSB 1.

The woman elected with the second highest vote was the PMDB's Dona Iris, wife of the mayor of Goiânia, with 201,229 votes, on a local joint ticket with the leftist PDT.

Luiza Erundina, mentioned above from São Paulo, got 195,886 votes on the PSB ticket.

The woman with the fourth highest vote was Lídice da Mata with 188,927 votes in Bahia, of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) on the local coalition ticket "July 2" of the PMDB, PPS, PSB, and PV. She won her bid to move up from the state level into the national congress.

The small state of Espirito Santo elected four women out of ten.

[ 12 October 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged

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