Brazilians Seek Political Renewal in Poll

09/28/2016 - 12h46

Brazil's former president, leftist firebrand Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has inspired many budding politicians to start their careers but few in quite the same way as José Afonso Pinheiro. 

The former janitor is standing as a candidate in municipal elections being held across Brazil next month after he was sacked from his previous job allegedly for providing testimony in a corruption case against the former president. 

Mr Pinheiro gave evidence supporting charges that, in the beachfront tower where he worked, Mr Lula da Silva was given a "triplex" luxury apartment by a construction company in exchange for contracts at Petrobras, the state-owned oil company. 

The former president denies wrongdoing. But the janitor's alleged mistreatment has inspired him to stand as a municipal councillor in his home town of Santos, Brazil's largest port, on a platform of honesty and competence - qualities he claims are sorely missing from Brazilian politics. 

"I never knew that I would pay such a high price for simply telling the truth," says Mr Pinheiro, a burly former boxer who sports a permanent grin.

Across Brazil, nearly half a million candidates like Mr Pinheiro are preparing for local elections that are expected to be among the most important in years in a country suffering deep political and economic crises. 

Voters are looking for political renewal amid discontent with the existing system after Brazil's previous president Dilma Rousseff was impeached in August and replaced by her former vice-president and coalition partner, Michel Temer. 

Ms Rousseff was officially ousted for budget violations but analysts say the real reasons were her mishandling of the economy and the corruption scandal at Petrobras that has embroiled her Workers' Party, the PT, and her predecessor and mentor, Mr Lula da Silva. 

The once dominant PT is expected to be crushed in the local elections, opening the way for the further fragmentation of politics in a country that already has 35 officially registered parties. 

"These local elections are important for how they will set up the presidential elections in 2018," said Juliano Griebeler, a consultant on government affairs at Barral M Jorge in Brasília. 

In a sign of the retreat of the PT, the party is fielding 42 per cent fewer candidates this year to contest the 5,568 mayoralties across the country and the nearly 58,000 city councillor positions available. 

"Compared with the elections in 2012, there are six new parties which supports analysis that there will be more fragmentation of politics in this election," Mr Griebeler said. 

These will also be the first elections in which companies are not allowed to finance campaigns - all donations must come from individuals.

There are already concerns this could lead to other types of fraud, such as criminal groups or churches secretly financing campaigns or fake donations being made using names of unsuspecting citizens without their consent.

"These elections for us are an experiment," said Gilmar Mendes, the judge heading the tribunal.

Up for grabs in the elections, which will be held in two rounds on October 2 and October 30, will be all of the major cities, including São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. 

Fernando Haddad, the mayor of Brazil's biggest city, São Paulo, is one of the PT's last politicians sitting in an important executive post, but he is trailing in the opinion polls behind João Doria of the PSDB. 

A businessman, Mr Doria's main electoral selling point is telling - that he is not a politician. "I'm not a politician, I'm a manager," he says on his Twitter account. 

While analysts say that local politics is too chaotic to necessarily indicate which party might win in presidential elections, a victory for Mr Doria might help the chances of PSDB candidates in the 2018 poll. Mayors can drum up support for candidates at the national level. 

But Mr Doria has been left fighting a rearguard action in recent days against claims that he annexed public land beside one of his homes in a nearby mountain retreat and for years refused to give it back even after a court order. He has denied wrongdoing.

It is dirty politics like this that scares many away from even standing for municipal positions in Brazil. Yet Mr Pinheiro, the janitor from Santos, insists he is undaunted in spite of having already been burnt by national politics. 

Still unemployed, he has been walking the streets of Santos (he has no car) visiting 1,400 buildings to canvass the support of other janitors for his bid while his wife, a domestic worker, has been supporting the household. 

He has sought to capitalise on the fame he gathered in national media for his testimony and subsequent dismissal by running under the name "Triplex Afonso".

"Our segment, that of janitors, has never had representation," he says proudly, adding that the city's doormen are lobbying the residents of their apartment blocks to back him.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016