Julho de 2009
Reading the political pages of Brazil’s newspapers it is easy to form the view that nothing has changed since the bad old days of the early 1990s, when the country teetered on the brink of collapse, with runaway inflation and a president soon to be defenestrated by impeachment proceedings for corruption.
Then, as now, the papers were full of extraordinary revelations concerning the questionable behaviour of Brazil’s political leaders. Then, as now, most of those politicians were able, with a good dose of chutzpah, to ride out the storm.
The current head of the Senate, a former president, regards well-documented revelations of nepotism as “a lack of respect” for his 50 years of public service. His predecessor saw nothing wrong in an employee of a construction company delivering cash payments to his former lover. Congressmen formerly regarded as above suspicion have been caught handing out airline tickets paid for by the taxpayer to friends and relations and done little more than apologise, if that. Even former president Fernando Collor de Mello, who resigned in disgrace in 1992, is back in the Senate as a powerful government fixer.
It is hard to reconcile such old-fashioned greed and graft with the modern Brazil emerging on the world stage as an example of successful government. Yet these two Brazils do co-exist. And while the old ways will not disappear soon, new ways are growing up beside them.
“There is a historical, cultural problem of a certain backwardness which is very hard to overcome,” says Jorge Gerdau, chairman of Grupo Gerdau, one of Brazil’s biggest steelmakers, and of the Movimento Brasil Competitivo, a private sector organisation dedicated to reducing Brazil’s enormous tax burden through efficiency in public spending. “But there is also increasing public demand for transparency and respect for the electorate.”
There is plenty of evidence to support this view. Mr Gerdau says his initiative got off the ground in the 1990s, when a group of businesses from his home state of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil developed a management quality programme that expanded into the public and “third” sectors. One example is a charitable hospital where the programme increased the usage of operating theatres from 50 per cent of capacity to 80 per cent.
Since 2003, INDG, a management consultancy that works with the MBC, has been selling management advice to state governments. The first was Minas Gerais in south-eastern Brazil, where INDG helped clear the state’s debts of R$1.7bn ($1bn) in two years from 2003. Its success in putting the state’s finances in order helped secure the re-election of Governor Aécio Neves in 2006.
INDG insists it is entirely non-political. Eight more states have become clients, led by government and opposition governors, and not only in the more developed south and south-east. Pernambuco, Alagoas and Sergipe in the less developed north-east hired INDG and are recognised as examples of more modern, efficient government. The consultancy also works for some of Brazil’s biggest municipal governments and with the federal government’s planning ministry.
Welerson Cavalieri, a consultant at INDG, says his company takes management systems that have been tried and tested in the private sector and applies them to public administration. State budgets, he says, are little more than statements of intent to which politicians have little commitment. “Our work is to set real budgets with efficient systems of control, so that monthly targets are set and evaluated at all levels,” he says.
Why should politicians bother? “Voters are paying more attention to the quality of services provided by the people they elect,” says Mr Cavalieri. “For politicians today, management ability is synonymous with votes. If you look at the last round of elections for state governor, the ones running for re-election who got the highest votes were those who had demonstrated the best management skills.”
As he points out, such approval did not follow party lines, with candidates from government and opposition parties doing equally well. At the next presidential election in October 2010, Mr Cavalieri says management ability will be among the deciding factors.
It may well have been an issue in the 2006 poll, when President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – the most popular president in Brazil’s history, who was seeking re-election – was forced into a second round by Geraldo Alckmin, the former governor of São Paulo state who seemed to epitomise modern managerial efficiency during his campaign.
Unfortunately for Mr Alckmin, personality also still counts and his shortage of social skills cost him dearly in the final stages.
Unless Mr Lula da Silva surprises everyone by trying to run for a third term – which would demand a change to the constitution and could cause severe damage to his democratic credentials – his enormous personality will no longer be a factor.
The two most likely leading contenders are José Serra, governor of São Paulo and a leader of the centrist opposition PSDB, and Dilma Rousseff, Mr Lula da Silva’s most powerful minister and a member of his leftwing PT.
Both will make much of their management ability. Mr Serra earned a name as a potent manager as health minister under Mr Lula da Silva’s predecessor and has strengthened that reputation in São Paulo. Ms Rousseff is the president’s righthand woman and in charge of running the government’s flagship infrastructure investment.
Given that neither has much charisma and both are regarded as prickly, each will hope voters pay more attention to their achievements than the warmth of their smiles.
Fonte: Financial Times Special Report - Brazil.