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Poll surge for right-winger spurs Brazil markets
SAO PAULO, Oct 3, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – A jump in polling for a far-right
politician leading the race for Brazil’s presidency spurred financial markets
on Tuesday as investors wagered his privatization-friendly policies could
boost the flagging economy.
Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain espousing ultra-conservative social
views and iron-fisted policies on crime and corruption, is seen as the
favorite going into the first round of presidential elections to be held on
Sunday.
A survey put out Monday by the Ibope polling company credited him with 31
percent of voter intentions in that round, well ahead of his nearest rival,
leftwing Socialist Party candidate Fernando Haddad, on 21 percent.
That prompted Sao Paulo’s stock market to rise by 3.5 percent in the
middle of trading on Tuesday, and pushed the Brazilian real higher against
the dollar.
“Bolsonaro is starting to be the one the financial market most identifies
with, mainly for his future finance minister,” said Wellington Ramos, an
analyst with the consulting firm Austin Rating.
Bolsonaro, 63, has said his choice for finance minister would be Paulo
Guedes, a respected, US-educated economist.
Bolsonaro is a polarizing figure in Brazil who has won sudden prominence
ahead of the election despite being in the country’s congress since 1991. He
has offered degrading comments against women, slammed same-sex marriage and
abortion, and lauded Brazil’s past under military rule.
But he has earned support from Brazil’s whiter, wealthier population
living mostly in the country’s south for his uncompromising anti-crime
rhetoric and for being one of very few politicians not to be tainted by
corruption allegations.
Brazil is also desperate for a return to prosperity after emerging last
year from its worst recession on record as a limping shadow of its once
buoyant self.
Bolsonaro has promised to secure that by adopting advice from liberal
economists such as Guedes. He has vowed to slash public debt by selling off
state assets and reform the burdened pension system.
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– Uncertain final round –
The growing support for Bolsonaro makes him the candidate to beat from a
dozen-strong field going into Sunday’s election. The two top vote-winners
will go on to a knockout round on October 28, with the victor taking office
in January 2019.
According to the surveys, Haddad is looking most likely to contest a run-
off against Bolsonaro.
A 55-year-old former education minister and mayor of Brazil’s biggest city
Sao Paulo, Haddad also soared from relative obscurity to be the Workers
Party’s candidate after its first choice, widely popular onetime president
Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, was declared ineligible as he serves a 12-year
prison term for graft.
Although he can count on backing from many of Brazil’s poorer citizens,
mostly in the northwest, Haddad’s proposed policies of lifting a freeze on
public spending and slowing the pace of privatizations do not sit easily with
investors. His steady rise in polling has seemingly stalled.
Surveys suggest a knockout round between Bolsonaro and Haddad would be
difficult to predict, with each seen winning around 42 percent of voting
intentions according to the Ibope poll.
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