Governo do Maranhão paga matéria no Financial Times para promover Flavio Dino e denegrir os Sarney

Maranhão shines amid gloom in Brazil

 (Maranhão brilha na escuridão do Brasil) - Finacial Times)

Joe Leahy in São Luis, Brazil

A political effort to revive the poor state has lessons for the country

©iStock

The Palace of Lions, which commands São Luis, the colonial era capital of Brazil’s north-eastern Maranhão state, from a bluff overlooking the sea, has seen many invaders come and go in its 400-year-old history. But none quite like its latest conqueror, state governor Flávio Dino. The Communist Party of Brazil politician vanquished in elections last year one of Latin America’s longest running political dynasties, the Sarney family. With its members occupying some of Brazil and the state’s most powerful political positions over five decades, the family had become a seemingly immovable part of Brazil’s traditional oligarchy.

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But now, 10 months into his four-year term, Mr Dino is facing an arguably bigger challenge — how to fulfil his election promise to lift the fortunes of Brazil’s second-poorest state even as the country suffers its worst recession since the 1930s.

“[The state’s] fiscal situation remains stable and we believe that next year should be less negative for Brazil,” Mr Dino, a former judge, tells the Financial Times in the palace’s boardroom, whose air-conditioning provides relief from the searing tropical sun. “But if the economy gets even worse, that’s when there could be a problem.”

With Brazilian national politics in turmoil thanks to policy paralysis and the economy set to sink 3 per cent this year, Mr Dino’s victory is an illustration of the desire for positive and clean governance among voters disenchanted with corruption and poor services, say analysts.

As in Maranhão, Brazil’s ruling coalition led by the Workers’ party, or PT, is facing political exhaustion after nearly 13 years in power, bogged down by a giant corruption scandal at state-owned oil company Petrobras. The opposition parties, meanwhile, rather than forging new ideas to appeal to voters, are sabotaging a much-needed government austerity programme to balance Brazil’s budget and restore the conditions for growth.
“Brazil is immersed in a three-dimensional crisis — political, economic and ethical,” wrote former central bank governor Carlos Langoni in a report, the Brazil Memo.
In contrast to the negative politics at the national level, Mr Dino in his election campaign last year sought to unite the opposition by setting aside ideological differences — his vice-governor is from the pro-business PSDB party — and winning over voters with a programme to tackle poverty and economic stagnation in the state. He also came with an updated view of leftist politics in Brazil — acknowledging the importance of the private sector to generate wealth.
“He is pro-market,” says Ricardo Zimbrão Affonso de Paula, economist at the Federal University of .

 

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Maranhão state governor Flávio Dino

The obstacles Mr Dino faces are considerable, not least because the Sarney dynasty and its allies remain entrenched. They control the main newspaper and television station. Roads, bridges and cities bear their name. A museum in São Luis’s Unesco World Heritage-listed late-17th century historical centre boasts a giant bust of family patriarch José Sarney.
The heavily moustachioed 85-year-old was Maranhão state governor in 1966, president of Brazil in 1985, and until recently head of the senate. His daughter Roseana has served four terms as Maranhão governor, her last ending in 2014.

The family declined to be interviewed but claims to have attracted R$130bn (US$34bn) in private investment to the state, mostly in big aluminium, oil, pulp and port projects. Critics argue the Sarneys’ bet on big industry did not alleviate poverty. Maranhão’s UN human development indicators (HDIs) are the second-worst in Brazil, below the Philippines and El Salvador in 2013.

To combat this, Mr Dino said he was introducing programmes such as “More HDI”, bringing fresh water supplies to the state’s 30 least developed towns, as well as “More Asphalt”, which will seal roads in the interior. There are plans to build seven regional hospitals by next year, 300 new schools, and recruit police to combat a 330 per cent increase in the murder rate.
Mr Dino claims he is paying for this and more by eliminating corruption and excess. He says he saved R$68m in palace expenses just by cutting champagne, caviar and lobsters at state banquets and reducing gubernatorial security by half.

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Such economies are also needed to help offset the recession. The depreciation of Brazil’s currency, the real, against the dollar has increased the state’s payments on its foreign debt by 25 per cent in six months. Meanwhile, the federal government transfers that account for half of Maranhão’s budget have fallen 30 per cent.
Despite this, the state government in September received a vote of confidence from Moody’s, the rating agency, which said Maranhão’s relatively low net debt to current revenue of 41 per cent, gave it “ample room” to deal with the sliding real.
With the state’s commodities exports set to slow further, Mr Dino’s still high approval ratings of 77 per cent remained under threat, said Mr Zimbrão of Maranhão federal university.
But voters seem willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, for now.
“I voted for him because he is new,” says Maria Ferreira, a maid begging for lunch money near the Palace of Lions. “Maybe he can do something. The Sarneys did nothing.”

 

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