Populism risk in Brazil is real, says presidential hopeful

Bloomberg

Six months ago Sao Paulo Mayor Joao Doria revealed unbridled presidential ambitions, travelling the country and the world professing an aggressive pro-market agenda and an management style with the slogan “Speed It Up.”
In an interview in his Sao Paulo office this week he struck a more humble, down-to-earth tone, talking about the need to do more in his home town, forge alliances with other centrist parties, and focus on a welfare and job-growth agenda as a means to meet his national objectives.
Why the change in attitude? Candidates from the far left and far right have risen in the polls ahead of next October’s general election, threatening Brazil’s recovery and possibly surprising overly optimistic
investors, says Doria.
“If we continue divided, the election will be lost to one of the two extremist candidates,” the 59-year-old former host of the Brazilian version of “The Apprentice” said in a fifth-floor conference room at City Hall. “Brazil needs alternatives so this risk doesn’t last until October.”
Brazil’s political class is reeling after the worst recession on record and a three-year corruption scandal that has put dozens of executives, legislators and party leaders behind bars. Trust in politicians has been shattered. What Brazilians are looking for in next year’s election is a clean and experienced candidate, according to Datafolha opinion poll. Enter Doria, who had never held elected office before becoming the first candidate in over two decades to win Sao Paulo’s mayoralty election in the first round last October.
Yet national politics in this continent-sized country are something altogether different. There former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the leftist Workers’ Party has extended his lead in opinion polls to around 36 percent of voter intentions, despite having been convicted of corruption charges. If the verdict is upheld by an
appeals court, he would be barred from
running next year.
On the opposite end of the political spectrum is a former army captain, Jair Bolsonaro, who has roughly 16 percent of voter intentions. As a legislator in the lower house of Congress for 26 years only two of his bills have been approved, and his understanding of economics, he says, is superficial.

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