Brazilian WI: Ciro Gomes is elected president of Brazil in 2002?

[Vinization]

For a brief time during the first round of the 2002 Brazilian presidential race, former governor of Ceará and former minister of finance Ciro Gomes either led the polls or was just barely behind Lula, the favourite candidate and OTL winner. However, Ciro's numbers collapsed and he eventually got the fourth place, behind José Serra and Anthony Garotinho?

Let's say that, for some reason, his polling surge holds and he's elected president, the how isn't that important here.

How well (or badly) would Ciro do in the top job? I assume his administration would be very similar to Lula's, since he served as a minister during his first term and fully endorsed his infrastructure projects (the Transposição of the São Francisco, the Transnordestina Railway and so on). Would there be any major differences? Given his running mate was Paulinho da Força there'd probably be a corruption scandal or two as well.

@Gukpard @Guilherme Loureiro @Monter @ByzantineCaesar @Miguel Lanius

 

[Gukpard]

For a brief time during the first round of the 2002 Brazilian presidential race, former governor of Ceará and former minister of finance Ciro Gomes either led the polls or was just barely behind Lula, the favourite candidate and OTL winner. However, Ciro's numbers collapsed and he eventually got the fourth place, behind José Serra and Anthony Garotinho?

Let's say that, for some reason, his polling surge holds and he's elected president, the how isn't that important here.

How well (or badly) would Ciro do in the top job? I assume his administration would be very similar to Lula's, since he served as a minister during his first term and fully endorsed his infrastructure projects (the Transposição of the São Francisco, the Transnordestina Railway and so on). Would there be any major differences? Given his running mate was Paulinho da Força there'd probably be a corruption scandal or two as well.

@Gukpard @Guilherme Loureiro @Monter @ByzantineCaesar @Miguel Lanius

Ciro would revitalise Vargas image.

I rember watching a conspirational and poor quality documentary about how "left wing evil forces" have been controlling Brazil since 1985, Brasil paralelo (pure junk). Still, they made the case that what Serra did to blow up Ciro campaign was to infiltrate people on all talk shows he took part and made them ask stupid and manipulative questions, and since Ciro had a temper he would get out of control and Serra used this to paint him as a raving lunatic. Assuming that part was not a section of that documentary lies, we could have him to keep calm and that would be the PoD to elect Ciro.

 

[Vinization]

Ciro would definitely need to keep his temper in check, that's problem he's had since the beginning of his career.

 

[Miguel Lanius]

Ciro is not getting elected as long as he continues with his retrograde Vargas-era economic policies. Lula only got elected because of the "Carta para o Povo Brasileiro" (Translation: Open Letter for the Brazilian People), where he promised he would keep FHC's Macroeconomic Tripod and Orthodox economic policies.

In other words: Lula won because he played ball with the market. The Market didn't mind a social-democrat or syndicalist, as long as they paired it with a sane economic policy. Thus the market was friendly to the Workers' Party until 2008 or so, when they stopped playing ball, until they realized the Workers' Party is not truly friendly to businessmen and their program was perpetuation in power, not economic reform.

If Ciro doesn't do that, he's not getting elected. Everyone with power and two braincells to rub together will do everything to prevent Ciro from being re-elected if that is not the case. After the mess of the Hyperinflation era, no one wants another heterodox president in power.

If he caves in and rules with sane economic orthodox policies, then his rule will be pretty decent-ish - considering the Commodities boom, I would say anyone getting elected in 2002 is having a pretty decent run, due to the golden combination of Economic Stability + Flood of Chinese Money entering the brazilian economy. High tide and all that. So much lost opportunity...

Ciro would definitely need to keep his temper in check, that's problem he's had since the beginning of his career.

Its not just his temper, Ciro Gomes is the living avatar of the Dunning-Kruger effect. The intellectualoid who thinks he is smarter than everyone else.

 

[Vinization]

Ciro is not getting elected as long as he continues with his retrograde Vargas-era economic policies. Lula only got elected because of the "Carta para o Povo Brasileiro" (Translation: Open Letter for the Brazilian People), where he promised he would keep FHC's Macroeconomic Tripod and Orthodox economic policies.

In other words: Lula won because he played ball with the market. The Market didn't mind a social-democrat or syndicalist, as long as they paired it with a sane economic policy. Thus the market was friendly to the Workers' Party until 2008 or so, when they stopped playing ball, until they realized the Workers' Party is not truly friendly to businessmen and their program was perpetuation in power, not economic reform.

If Ciro doesn't do that, he's not getting elected. Everyone with power and two braincells to rub together will do everything to prevent Ciro from being re-elected if that is not the case. After the mess of the Hyperinflation era, no one wants another heterodox president in power.

If he caves in and rules with sane economic orthodox policies, then his rule will be pretty decent-ish - considering the Commodities boom, I would say anyone getting elected in 2002 is having a pretty decent run, due to the golden combination of Economic Stability + Flood of Chinese Money entering the brazilian economy. High tide and all that. So much lost opportunity...


Its not just his temper, Ciro Gomes is the living avatar of the Dunning-Kruger effect. The intellectualoid who thinks he is smarter than everyone else.

It's not like the economy cratered during his months as minister of finance, plus he served in Lula's cabinet so things wouldn't be that different.

And yeah, few things are more annoying than a person who is aware of his/her own intelligence and grows an immense, arrogant ego because of it.

 

[Vinization]

Also, I think a good POD for Brazil to take more advantage of the 2000s boom would be having more decent governors when it happens. Many of the ones we had during this period - Rosinha Garotinho, Sérgio Cabral, Geraldo Alckmin, Roseana Sarney, Marconi Perillo, Joaquim Roriz and so on - were either useless or extremely corrupt.