On Oct. 31, 2010, more than 100 million Brazilians went to the polls to participate in the second-round runoff election for president. More than 55 million of them (56%) cast their vote for Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (PT), who was elected the first female president of Brazil. She defeated José Serra of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), the former governor of São Paulo state. The election witnessed Pres. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s active support of Rousseff, his former chief of staff and the former minister of mines and energy, who successfully capitalized on Lula’s popularity with the electorate. Nevertheless, Rousseff, who had never run for elective office, was forced into the runoff with Serra by the strong first-round finish of Green Party (PV) candidate and former PT militant Sen. Marina Silva, who received 19% of the vote to deny Rousseff the more than 50% she needed to triumph in the first round on October 3. Rousseff campaigned on a platform of economic stability, increased infrastructure investment, and more stringent budget management. Her victory was a testament to the success of Lula’s social and economic policies.
On June 4—with attention focused on the elections for president, governorships, the Chamber of Deputies, and two-thirds of the Senate—Lula signed Law No. 135, known as the Clean Slate Law, which prevented the candidacy of convicted felons in leadership elections. The law, a product of a grassroots effort to combat government corruption (some 1.9 million people signed the petition that sought the legislation), had been passed by the Chamber of Deputies on May 5 and by the Senate on May 19. On June 17 the Federal Elections Court ruled the law to be retroactive and applicable to the 2010 elections. This meant that any politician with a felony on record or who had resigned from elected office to avoid prosecution would not be permitted to run for election. Over the course of the year, many politicians with questionable backgrounds tested the validity of the law and its applicability to the 2010 elections. Some took their cases all the way to the Supreme Court.
Throughout 2010 there were great advances in hydroelectric, oil, and natural gas development projects. On February 1 the Brazilian Environmental Agency (IBAMA) approved the economic-impact assessment for the planned Belo Monte Hydroelectric Plant. The Belo Monte facility—to be located on the Xingu River in Pará state—would be the third largest hydroelectric plant in the world. Driven by the great volume of investments needed to extract and produce oil and gas found in the subsalt layer of the Santos Basin, Petrobrás, the Brazilian state oil company, launched the world’s largest initial public offering of stock to date in 2010. With $70 billion raised, Petrobrás became the world’s fourth largest company in terms of market capitalization, with a value of $214 billion, behind Exxon Mobil, Apple, and PetroChina. Petrobrás would apply the new funds to execute its $224 billion capital-investment plan for 2010–14. In advance of these massive investments, the Brazilian legislature debated the new regulatory regime to exploit the subsalt layer, which mandated Petrobrás as the exclusive operator and set the division of royalties for states and municipalities.
On November 21 the city of Rio de Janeiro faced tumult when organized-crime elements seized and destroyed vehicles to protest the occupation and pacification of criminal strongholds and the transfer of prisoners from Rio de Janeiro prisons to prisons in the far-off states of Roraima and Rondonia. (From these remote locations it was more difficult for imprisoned members of the Red Command to oversee their drug-trafficking operations.) Rio de Janeiro authorities struck back quickly and, with the help of armoured Brazilian navy units, stormed and took control of the Vila Cruzeiro slum on November 25. Shortly before 8:00 am the following Sunday, a security force comprising members of the state police, army, navy, and federal police entered the Complexo Alemão slum, to which many of the criminals from Vila Cruzeiro had fled. The security force quickly took control and began a house-to-house roundup of criminals, munitions, drugs, and other contraband. The taking of the crime-ridden Complexo Alemão, one of the largest slums in Rio de Janeiro, was of historic importance as security forces prepared Brazil and Rio de Janeiro to host, respectively, the 2014 association football (soccer) World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. Over the course of this pacification, more than 30 people were killed as the police seized an estimated 35 metric tons of marijuana, 235 kg (about 520 lb) of cocaine, and more than 200 automatic weapons.
As 2010 ended, President-elect Rousseff began to form her cabinet with several holdovers and prominent members of Lula’s administrations, among them Antonio Palocci as chief of staff, Guido Mantega (minister of finance), and Miriam Belchior (minister of planning). The central bank president, Henrique Meirelles, who was recognized as having contributed greatly to Brazilian economic stabilization, stayed to the end of the administration, having completed eight years’ service alongside Lula. To safeguard the central bank from political pressures, Rousseff indicated that the next central bank president would be Alexandre Tombini, a technocrat and central bank director.
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In 2010 Brazil continued its solid economic growth, based largely on global demand for commodities and the burgeoning domestic market. For the four quarters that ended in September 2010, Brazilian GDP rose 7.5%. Fear of an overheating economy and of inflation, however, drove the Brazilian central bank’s Open Market Committee to raise the benchmark overnight discount rate from 8.75% to 10.75% in a series of interest-rate increases from April through July. In December the central bank raised the compulsory reserve requirement on bank deposits from 15% to 20%, partially in an attempt to stave off the increased indebtedness of the growing consumer class. For the 12 months that ended in November 2010, inflation, as measured by the National Consumer Price Index, reached 5.63%, well within the central bank targets of 2.5–6.5%.