The dispute for the confidence of the national business community and the defense of the legacy of their respective governments have turned the economy into the new front of the campaigns of former President Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party – PT) and President Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party – PL) in this final stretch.
After the PT gained ground by bringing together big names of the GDP on Tuesday, September 27, in São Paulo, the current holder of the Presidential Palace has escalated the Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, to the front line of the electoral process.
The Ipiranga gas station recorded a spot for the president’s electoral campaign on TV and intensified meetings with business people and interviews about the government’s performance.
Members of the government saw the presence of names aligned to the president at the dinner with da Silva as a sign of “disengagement”.
In the statements recorded in recent days for the electoral campaign, Guedes defends the government’s role in the economy, emphasizes the rescue of the most vulnerable during the pandemic with emergency aid, and says that Brazil came out of the crisis better than other countries.
On another front, on Tuesday, the minister participated for more than four hours in the podcast Flow.
“It will be the first time in 42 years that Brazil will grow more than China,” he said. “We are growing more than them; we have lower inflation than them.”
This deflation cited by the minister is due to the reduction of taxes promoted by the government on fuels and electric energy and is concentrated in these segments, not yet reaching products such as food.
Guedes also criticized those who, according to him, “climbed on corpses to make politics” in the pandemic.
“Many people said: ‘Get out of there, Paulo. Don’t stay there helping me. And I said: ‘200 million people depend on us out there, and you are going to do politics at a time like this? What will happen if Brazil sinks into a crisis this tremendous? Brazil will become Venezuela.
“What do you think you are going to be president of? What do you think will be left over there? Ah, but save your biography. I am not worried about my biography. I want to help 200 million people.”
The minister also gave an interview for Jovem Pan’s Pânico program. He used one of the famous aphorisms of writer Millôr Fernandes to explain why Brazil does not advance in its economic growth.
Guedes said that the country “is ahead of its past,” and whenever it starts to get out of the hole, a “ghost appears and hijacks everything again”. For him, this saying applies to the current election.
BREAKING DOWN RESISTANCE
On his Twitter profile, Bolsonaro has been making posts with Guedes. He replicated, for example, the minister’s participation in Flow.
For members of the reelection campaign, Guedes’ current “tour” through various programs may have good results, especially on voters who have already voted for the president but have distanced themselves from him during the government.
The evaluation is that the minister is the best person to vocalize the economic measures of the current administration and project the achievements of a possible second term.
Lula da Silva’s Tuesday meeting with business people, promoted by the Grupo Esfera, was one of the main dialogue initiatives between the PT candidate and the sector.
Party members evaluate that da Silva still suffers resistance from part of the business community.
Party members also emphasized that the meeting was necessary for the former president to emphasize that he is more committed to the center in a possible new government.
And that he will dialogue and listen to the productive sector. At the event, Lula da Silva asked that business people present proposals for the country.
One of the moves to the center made by Lula da Silva’s advisors was an attempt to talk with the president of the Central Bank, Roberto Campos Neto. Nominated by Bolsonaro, he will remain in office until 2024, when his term ends, since the Central Bank is now autonomous.
Campos Neto, however, thought it was better to wait for the results of the polls. In an interview with SBT TV on Tuesday, da Silva classified the current president of the Central Bank as a “reasonable” person and a “competent economist”.
The party is still trying to consolidate what it considers a “wave” of support for da Silva in the first round and is seeking the explicit backing of prominent businessmen.
“It wasn’t a vote-turning dinner; it was a dinner to reduce mistrust,” summarized a businessman at the meeting with Lula da Silva in São Paulo.
About one hundred executives went to the house of João Camargo, founder of Esfera, for a meeting that had been planned to take place only in the second round of voting but was brought forward due to the concrete perspective that Lula da Silva would win in the first round.
According to the report of one of those present, the former president showed no resentment of Bolsonaro’s erstwhile allies and “said everything the audience wanted to hear.
The mention of a spending cap replacement caused discomfort, but in the sequence, da Silva repeated that his government prized fiscal responsibility and made an analogy with the corporate environment to approach the audience.
“He used a businessman’s logic and said: “just like a company, a government sometimes needs to get into debt to grow,” said one executive.
Many after the dinner remembered, in conversations among themselves, that in 2003 Lula da Silva’s government got the economy right. Others repeated that Geraldo Alckmin, former Tucano, vice-president of the former president, would have a prominent role in an eventual new term of da Silva.
“The biggest distrust is not with Lula da Silva but with the entourage; that’s what he tried to reduce,” said one of those present.
According to another account, the former president tried to “redo the bond with some or create with those he never had.”
During the meeting, important names in the GDP addressed concerns about the fiscal and tax situation and expressed the need for the country to have credit to reindustrialize, for agribusiness to focus on preserving the environment, and for the State to emphasize social issues.
They heard from da Silva and Aloizio Mercadante, coordinator of the government program, that an eventual new PT administration would promote tax reform and that policies to stimulate industry growth and guarantee environmental protection would be a priority.
With information from O Globo