SOURCE/LINK:http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/03/us-brazil-election-neves-idUSBREA321NR20140403
Underdog
for Brazil's presidency bets on post-World Cup surge
BRASILIA Thu Apr 3, 2014 2:50pm EDT
RELATED TOPICS: http://politica.estadao.com.br/noticias/eleicoes,aecio-adota-vacinas-para-rebater-temor-de-retrocesso-social-imp-,1168244
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Brazil »
(Reuters) - Aecio Neves is running for president
of Brazil
and promising to turn the page on 12 years of leftist government. But he has a
problem.
Despite being the grandson of a famous politician
and the leader of Brazil's main opposition party, seven out of 10 Brazilians
have never heard of him.
Unfazed, he says that will change after Brazil
finishes hosting the soccer World Cup in July and the presidential race kicks
off in earnest in the Brazilian media.
"Voters increasingly want change, but they
have yet to transfer that desire for change to an opposition candidate, because
they don't know their names," Neves said.
In a wide-ranging interview with Reuters, he
outlined a pro-business program for restoring investor confidence in Brazil's economy,
which has sputtered in the last three years under the heavy-handed policies of
President Dilma Rousseff.
A Neves administration, he said, would seek to
revive Latin America's largest economy
by lowering taxes, curbing public spending and rebuilding Brazil's battered
state-controlled oil company, Petroleo Brasileiro SA.
Some investors are betting that the dapper senator
from the centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party has a decent chance of
winning.
Rousseff had appeared to be a safe bet for
re-election in the October 5 vote but Brazil's financial markets
have risen in recent weeks on hopes that Neves, or another potential contender
Eduardo Campos, can end the 12 years of Workers' Party rule.
While Rousseff still has more voter support than
Neves and Campos put together, her approval ratings have fallen due to Brazil's
weak economy and a snowballing scandal enveloping Petrobras, the state oil
company.
Brazil's business
class enjoyed boom times under Rousseff's predecessor and mentor Luiz Inacio
Lula da Silva, but has lost trust in her stewardship of the economy because of
state interference and deteriorating public finances.
For Neves, Rousseff's inability to rein in spending
and the use of creative accounting to meet fiscal targets led to Standard &
Poor's decision last week to downgrade Brazil's credit rating one notch.
"The challenge will be to recover lost
confidence. You can't trust any of the government's numbers anymore," he
said.
SMALLER GOVERNMENT
The 54-year-old economist won praise for his
austere management as governor of Brazil's second most populous state, Minas
Gerais, and he believes the same bitter medicine is what Brazil's federal
government needs now.
If elected, he plans to limit government spending
to the pace of economic growth, reduce the number of government ministries from
39 to about half that, and lower one of the heaviest tax burdens in the world
in order to spur investment.
To restore the finances of Petrobras, Brazil's
largest and most indebted company, Neves plans to raise gasoline prices
"without question" and end Rousseff's policy of subsidizing fuel
costs to curb inflation. The policy forces Petrobras to sell gasoline at a
loss, hurting its bottom line.
"We will free Petrobras from the claws of a
political clique," he said. "Petrobras is a tool for developing the
nation. It cannot be used as a tool of economic policy to make up for a
government's failure to control inflation."
Neves says he is open to debate on whether
concessions or controversial new production sharing contracts are the best way
to go to tap Brazil's vast offshore oil fields and recover Petrobras' capacity
to invest and expand production.
While Rousseff has begun to turn to private
entrepreneurs to rebuild Brazil's dilapidated infrastructure, such as roads,
ports and airports, Neves said he would expand partnerships with the private
sector to all areas of the economy.
As two-time governor of his home state of Minas,
Neves eliminated its deficit while delivering some of the best school and health
facilities in Brazil. He slashed the number of government secretariats, linked
pay to performance for state employees and took a 45 percent pay cut himself.
Critics say his party's penchant for selling off
public companies to private investors caters to big business
and that a Neves administration would roll back social gains that vastly
reduced poverty in Brazil under Lula and Rousseff.
Neves retorts that political cronyism and
corruption has prevailed in federal government under the Workers' Party and
Brasilia badly needs to hire civil servants based on merit.
His grandfather was Tancredo Neves, a beloved
politician who was elected president in 1985 but died before taking office as
the figurehead of Brazil's return to civilian rule after 21 years of military
dictatorship.
Neves has been derided by some as a handsome
playboy with insufficient heft for the presidency, and also criticized for
failing to make a mark in the Senate. Still, he says he has the political
courage to take the unpopular belt-tightening measures the country needs.
"I can assure you, if I win the election I
will not govern with an eye on opinion polls. I will do what has to be
done."
"Unfortunately, we are back to where we were
10 years ago in Brazil. Instead of discussing productivity and competitiveness,
we are again talking about crisis of confidence and inflation."
