MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Marina Silva pledges to de-politicize regulatory agencies and state corporations
“Agencies have been overtaken by a political logic,” pointed out Silva adding that similar interference is weakening state-run companies like Petrobras Brazilian presidential candidate Marina Silva vowed to de-politicize regulatory agencies that she says do more to win favor with government allies than ensure fair and efficient markets in Latin America's biggest economy.
Silva, who is running neck-and-neck with President Dilma Rousseff in polls ahead of next month's election, accused the ruling Workers' Party of undermining regulation by stacking government watchdogs with party members and allies during its 12 years in power.
“Agencies have been overtaken by a political logic,” she said adding that similar interference is weakening state-run companies like Petrobras, the oil company currently embroiled in a kickback scandal.
If elected, Silva added, she would prioritize “ethical and technical criteria” among regulators and use a non-partisan committee to select them.
A 56-year-old former rubber tapper and maid whose activism as an environmentalist catapulted her to Brazil's Senate and a five-year run as environment minister, Silva has upended the electoral campaign ahead of a first-round vote on Oct. 5.
Originally a vice presidential candidate, she was thrust into top billing for the Brazilian Socialist Party when her running mate, Eduardo Campos, was killed in an August plane crash.
Since then, Silva, who could become Brazil's first mixed race president, surged to become a frontrunner and she is expected to go into a runoff vote against Rousseff on Oct. 26.
If elected, she will be tasked with jump-starting an economy now in its fourth year of lackluster growth, weak investment and a loss of competitiveness by major industries. She would also have to tame an unruly Congress that has proven restive even when far bigger parties have controlled it.
So far, Silva has drawn voters with promises to maintain popular welfare programs, push for more sustainable development and return to the market-friendly fiscal policies that paved the way for a near decade-long boom that fizzled in 2011.
Silva's call for more independence for regulators is similar to a key pledge she made early in her campaign to grant formal independence to Brazil's central bank.
Economists, and Rousseff's opponents, have said that political pressure by her administration has led the bank to grow more lenient with inflation, now running at just over the government's official tolerance ceiling of 6.5%.
But Silva declined to specify just how she plans to seek independence for the central bank. She also declined to say whether the bank's mandate would move beyond its current focus on inflation.
“We want the best arrangement for Brazil,” she said, acknowledging the more comprehensive role that the Federal Reserve, for instance, plays in fighting unemployment in the United States.
Silva is the only candidate to publish an extensive, point-by-point agenda on critical issues and proposals. However since that agenda was released, however, she has grown more cautious because of efforts by Rousseff and centrist rival Aecio Neves to poke holes in it. Rousseff campaign ads suggested that Silva's plan for the central bank would take food off the tables of poor Brazilians.
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Read all commentsSilva is obviously rattling Dumbass Dilma and her crooked cronies.
Sep 27th, 2014 - 01:25 pm 0I would like her to be elected but perhaps there has not been sufficient time for her to learn the ropes: the lies put out by the present crooks about the role of the central bank in removing food off their tables is laughable when you realise that most of them exist on the Bolsa Familia Scheme and nothing is to change on that.
The whole problem with Brazil's politics is that the PT has infiltrated their cronies in every level of the Federal, as well as State governments where they are the situation. Those who support the PT are either benefiting from direct handouts, such as the 'bolsa famíla' recipients, or are who we call the “caviar leftists”, people of a reasonably high social standing who openly manifest their sympathy for the PT , because it's convenient for them...
Sep 27th, 2014 - 10:03 pm 0The PT has adopted Goebbels' tactics to mislead the public, and as to Marina having to deal with the lies and slander they resort to, she is showing a remarkable capacity to fight back. She has to stay smart and not allow any lowlife insinuations to go unanswered.
I absolutely love all you experts on Brasil who live outside the country. You have no clue how Marina will behave if she is elected, but her statements in various venues here have made it clear that she will suck up to the evangelicals and to her elite handlers. She has changed parties several times just to run if possible She lost big time in 2010, and PT continued its work to raise more and more people out of poverty. According to the opposition candidates political corruption was invented by Lula and PT. Please! Don't perpetuate this myth about Goeggels. You have the wrong information about the political leanings of fascist Goebbels vesus the left government. PT never said anything bad about Marina until she opened her mouth and began to badmouth PT and the government. Don't worry. Dilma's numbers are up and Marina will convict herself out of her own mouth. Her elite puppeteers will not be able to stop that. At this point many expert outside observers, as well as many of us inside Brasil have some doubts about Marina's original intentions to run for VP. She certainly has enough friends, both in the US and in on the right that could have easily arranged an “accident” for Campos, and likely would for their own selfish interests. The USA doesn't much like Dilma because they can't control her. So they want someone in her place that will hurl Brasil right back to 1984 or earlier.
Sep 27th, 2014 - 11:59 pm 0Commenting for this story is now closed.
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