Opinion: Shoot Out

10/23/2014 - 15h16

The bad tempered and polarizing presidential campaign has resembled an old fashioned shoot out and the outcome is still far from certain.

Whoever is elected this Sunday (26) will have to work overtime to pick up the pieces. There are two issues which should worry Brazilians about the future.

First is a domestic concern: How Brazil deals in the scourge of endemic corruption.

The Petrobras case is the most recent example of a chronic problem which continues to occur where the nexus of politics, electoral financing, state corporations, construction companies, political parties, bribery and kick backs, meet in a clandestine, toxic, and self interested proximity.

Solving this problem will be difficult. There are many fingers in the honey pot. The stench of corruption taints the whole system and transparency and accountability are the obvious antidotes.

But achieving transparency and accountability remains problematic when so many in both the public and private sectors benefit so mightily from the maintenance of the status quo.

The second challenge involves Brazil's ambiguous relationship with the world. Corruption has international ramifications, especially in the Petrobras case.

The US regulatory agencies, such as the Security and Exchange Commission, are said to be investigating. Global markets are worried about the prospects of a Venezuelan default, combined with deteriorating prospects for Ukraine which will face repayment on a US$ 3 billion bond to Russia in December next year.

Nor is it clear if either the PT or the PSDB has much to offer on the bloody quagmire in the Middle East, on Russian adventurism, on the slowing down of China's economy, on the implications of European stagnation, on Ebola in West Africa, or on the political paralysis in the US.

Yet in the new year all could impact Brazil's economic, political, and diplomatic prospects.

Brazil has achievements to be sure. Both the PT, as well as the PSDB, have done much over the past twenty years to provide a better life and more opportunities for many Brazilians.

Yet neither Dilma nor Aecio will give any credit to the other for these achievements. Ironically next Sunday the result could come down to the vissicitudes of the weather and the lack of rain. A quarter of all Brazilian voters live in Sao Paulo.

Opinion polls show that most Paulistas believe the State Government, long controlled by the PSDB, has not acted effectively in face of the crisis. The water shortages have been most acute around the Sao Paulo metropolis.

This is where the poor live. It is where poor women in particular have benefited most from the policies of Dilma's government. In a excruciatingly close election their vote could well determine the outcome.