Economy

BRAZILIANS seemed to be clamouring
for change. Since nationwide protests
erupted in June last year over shoddy public
services, the rising cost of living and venal
politicians unable to do anything
about either, two in three have been telling
pollsters they wanted their next government
to do things differently. Yet on October
26th, 51.6% of them opted for continuity.
The president, Dilma Rousseff, was
re-elected to a second four-year term and
her left-wing Workers’ Party (PT) handed
its fourth consecutive victory. The centreright
challenger, Aécio Neves, trailed by
3.5m votes. It was the slimmest margin in
Brazil’s modern psephological history, but
a clear defeat nonetheless.
Perhaps this was inevitable. Only two
Latin American presidents have lost reelection
bids in the past three decades.
Odds are stacked in favour of incumbents,
with all the machinery of power and patronage
at their disposal. Ms Rousseff
could also point to record-low unemployment,
rising wages and falling inequality
on the PT’s watch. But Mr Neves argued,
with good reason, that progress has stalled
since Ms Rousseff took office in 2011. Fully
51m Brazilians believed him. Ms Rousseff’s
54.5m votes, out of an eligible population
of 143m, are certainly no ringing endorsement.
“The message from the ballot box is
this…change and reform,” she conceded
in a television interviewon October 27th.
start, however, when she failed so much as
to mention Mr Neves, who had been gracious
enough to congratulate her.
The scars run deep. Ms Rousseff’s ally
and predecessor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
went so far as to liken the PSDB to the Nazis
because of their supposed intolerance of
the disadvantaged. The PSDB, for its part,
accused the PT of being mired in sleaze, citing
a rumbling probe into a kickback
scheme at Petrobras, the state-controlled
oil giant, that allegedly benefited Ms Rousseff’s
party and some coalition allies.
Three days before the run-off Veja,...