Brazil: Lula’s strength today is similar to the Real Plan in 1994

Read more at: www.latampolitics.com

In 1994, President Lula lost the elections in first-round voting because, amongst other reasons, he vehemently attacked the Real Plan. During that year, Lula stated that the plan was electoral and was only put together in order to elect Fernando Henrique Cardoso and therefore would be short lived.

Similarly as it was unpopular to badmouth the Real Plan in 1994, opposition candidates are realizing that attacking President Lula is not good business. The PSDB, adversary of Antônio Carlos Magalhães Neto (DEM) who currently leads the dispute in Salvador, is using declarations from the time of the “monthly payoff” scandal when he stated that he would give the president a “thrashing” in order to destroy his favoritism.

Aware of the damage that this could cause his campaign, ACM Neto even threatened to implode the alliance amongst the parties for the 2010 presidential race. Eduardo Paes (PMDB), who leads the dispute in Rio de Janeiro, also attempted to justify attacks made against President Lula in 2005, when he was a member of the PSDB.

It’s hardly surprising that for a long time now Aécio Neves has been stating that he doesn’t want to be an anti-Lula candidate, quite to the contrary, he wants to be post-Lula.  This will be one of the greatest challenges to be faced by the president’s adversaries: besides not being able to attack him, they will have to conjure up a message capable of seducing the electorate.