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Part 5: 1990 Elections, Part Two
Since the 1970s, Bahia had been under the iron grip of a powerful oligarch named Antônio Carlos Magalhães (or just ACM), a hardened political veteran whose career started in the 1950s, when he was elected a federal deputy as a member of the National Democratic Union (UDN). His power reached new heights after 1964 coup d'état, and his support of the dictatorship was rewarded first with him being appointed mayor of Salvador in 1967 and from using his new position to become governor of Bahia three years later. Since then, all of the governors and most of the mayors and congressmen were allies of his, and ACM's control of state politics, with a few exceptions, seemed absolute. The return of democracy seemed to do little to weaken him, and he not only became a senator in 1982, but also managed to have two allies of his be elected governor that same year and mayor of Salvador in 1985 (Clériston Andrade and Edvaldo Brito, respectively).
Then everything changed in 1986. That year, a small plurality of the baianos (around 38% of them) made Waldir Pires, a member of PTB and a bitter enemy of ACM and PDS, their governor. Waldir's political career also started in the 1950s, when he first became a congressman, and he almost won the 1962 gubernatorial election, which he lost by just three percentage points. With the rise of the dictatorship, he fled into exile and only returned to active politics in 1982, when he was elected federal deputy under the banner of PMDB, which he abandoned along with several other progressives after the announcement of the Plano Cruzado and its austerity measures. His victory was considered a great upset, and he was considered as a potential running mate for Leonel Brizola in 1989, something that he quickly refused, stating that, although honoured, he had to fight for the people of Bahia and ensure that ACM never came back (1).
The elation from this victory was quickly replaced by turbulence: although he no longer had a governor on his side, ACM still had most mayors and a majority of the Legislative Assembly under his control, which ensured that any promising new measures of his would never be enacted. As Rio de Janeiro and other states ruled by PTB built dozens and eventually hundreds of CIEPs, among other things, Waldir was busy enough just ensuring that the assemblymen didn't just impeach him for some ridiculous reason, which cut into his popularity among the people and lowered his approval ratings (2).
By 1990, it seemed that certain that ACM would return to the governorship without any difficulty at all, and no runoff would be required. Naturally, people were shocked when the living institution that he was fell short of the magic number of 50+1% of the vote to win the race outright, and even more surprised when, during the last days of the runoff, ACM and Waldir were in a dead heat.
The idea that Magalhães could be defeated by a razor-thin margin in a race that he was supposed to win in the first round was unthinkable, and was by far the biggest surprise of election night. There are three main reasons as to why this upset took place: first, although ACM was quite popular in the interior, the populous capital city of Salvador and its surroundings,, absolutely hated his guts and voted en masse for Waldir, as did other important municipalities such as Vitória da Conquista and Feira de Santana. The second one is that Brizola won carried the state in 1989, and most of those who voted for the Old Caudillo voted for his colleague out of loyalty to PTB. The third and probably most important of them is that Magalhães, confident that his victory was guaranteed, didn't campaign as hard as he could have, while Waldir crisscrossed the state and took part in rallies and marches as if his life depended on it.
While ACM would still remain an influential figure in Bahia's politics, his stranglehold over the state apparatus was broken for good.
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Ceará had a very different story to tell, for although the state was under the control of the
Três Coronéis (Three Oligarchs) since 1962, their power was falling apart rapidly, and the only reason they controlled the governorship was because of PMDB's unpopularity in 1986, something that not even the popular Tasso Jereissati was able to overcome. Four years after that near miss, the opposition rallied around Ciro Gomes, a young member of PSDB who was elected mayor of Sobral in 1988 and resigned after little more than a year so he could run for governor. The incumbent Adauto Bezerra, who belonged to the infamous trio (César Cals, Virgílio Távora and Bezerra) was facing crisis after crisis, with the capital city of Fortaleza coming dangerously close to running out of water because of a particularly strong drought, and declined to run for reelection due to his unpopularity.
The establishment candidate was Paulo Lustosa, a congressman who served in the previous administrations fulfilling several duties and was rather lackluster to say the least. Ciro, meanwhile, managed to present himself as the candidate of change, something that resonated with the
cearense population, tired of being ruled by the same three people since the last twenty-four years. The inconvenient fact that his own family held a great deal of power in Sobral since the 19th century was shoved aside (3).
Predictably, Ciro Ferreira Gomes became governor of Ceará. He was just 31 years old and by far the youngest man to be elected to this office in 1990. This youthfulness, combined with his abrasive style and short temper (to say the least) made him famous not only in the state but also on the rest of Brazil, with media outlets every now and then publishing some of his more incendiary quotes. Though he publicly criticized the media for this behavior (he said that his most explosive quotes were often taken out of context), he couldn't, privately, help but notice that this fame could help him satisfy his great ambitions.
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When one talks about local strongmen, there is one state in Brazil that is the poster child of the coronelismo phenomenon: Maranhão. One of the poorest states in the country, it was dominated by the powerful PDS senator José Sarney, whose allies control the governorship since 1965, when José was elected to the post as a member of UDN. Before that, Maranhão was ruled by another senator, Vitorino Freire, who controlled it through various cronies for twenty years (from 1945 to 1965). Such stagnation unsurprisingly led to extremely high levels of corruption, and the consequences of that were unfortunately just as predictable: its infrastructure was woefully underdeveloped, its illiteracy ratings were among the highest in all of Brazil, and most of of its schools (epecially the public ones) were built out of clay and mud with roofs made out of straw.
All in all, the state looked more like a dystopian country, with millions of people suffering under the grip of a corrupt dictator, a system that lasted for decades and seemed impossible to defeat. That seemed to be the case in 1990, as the incumbent governor, João Castelo, one of Sarney's closest allies, seemed set to win a second consecutive term, even though his tenure was plagued with corruption scandals that made headlines all over Brazil. However, Maranhão was not free from the wave of democratization that swept the rest of the country, and no regime, no matter how powerful, lasts forever.
That is the lesson that the maranhense voters taught when in October 3, when they prevented Castelo from winning the race outright and forced him into a runoff. His opponent was Jackson Lago, a doctor and member of PTB who was mayor of São Luís from 1985 to 1988 (4). What seemed to be a cakewalk slipped from the governor's grasp, as it became clear that Sarney's viceroy was nowhere near ready for a prolonged campaign.
In the end, though Lago's victory was still a mighty feat, few were surprised. The people of Maranhão, much like those from other states, were tired of being led by the same people for decades on end. Though the oligarchy had been defeated for now, it was time for the new governor to show what he was made of and give one ob Brazil's poorest states a better future (5).
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Notes:
(1) IOTL, Waldir Pires was elected governor of Bahia with an impressive 67% of the vote. However, he resigned to become Ulysses Guimarães' running mate in 1989 and the governorship was taken over by his lieutenant Nilo Coelho, who proved himself to be as corrupt and incompetent as possible. Predictably, ACM returned to the governorship in 1990 in the first round.
(2) Coronéis and their mannerisms.
(3) That's not an exaggeration, since the first mayor of Sobral, back in the 1890s, was a guy named Vicente Cesar Ferreira Gomes.
(4) IOTL, Jackson Lago is a bit of a tragic figure. Elected mayor of São Luís in 1988 IOTL, he ran for the governorship four times. In his third attempt, in 2006,he narrowly defeated former governor Roseana Sarney, who was widely expected to win in the first round, becoming the first governor in 40 to not be one of José Sarney's many cronies. However, he was overthrown in 2009 on very sketchy charges (once again, coronéis and their mannerisms) and died of prostate cancer in 2011.
(5) In other words, the Sarney oligarchy is kicked out of Maranhão twenty-four years before OTL.
, i can't believe but...instantly watched! Keep it up