1989 Brazilian presidential election
Presidential elections were held in Brazil in 1989. They were the first direct presidential elections since 1960, the first to be held using a two-round system and the first to take place under the 1988 constitution, which followed two decades of authoritarian rule after the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état.
In the first round, economically liberal populist Fernando Collor de Mello led the field at 30.5 percent of the vote, coming up well short of the required simple majority. After receiving 453,800 more votes than Leonel Brizola of the Democratic Labour Party, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the leftist Workers' Party, finished second and proceeded to the second round against Collor.
Collor won the second round by a margin of 6 percentage points, making it the closest presidential elections in Brazilian history until Dilma Rousseff's narrow reelection in 2014.
Background
On January 15, 1985, following two decades of a US-backed right-wing military dictatorship, in power since the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, Tancredo Neves of the Brazilian Democratic Movement, the opposition party in a military junta-imposed two-party system, was indirectly elected president by Congress. The government was an authoritarian illiberal democracy which directly elected representatives, but not the president. It was in a process of slow liberalization since the 1974 indirect election of Ernesto Geisel, who was more permissive of political dissent than his hard-liner predecessor, Emílio Garrastazu Médici. Neves was the first civilian to be elected president since 1960.However, Neves was hospitalized of an untreated cancer on the eve of his inauguration, and finally died in 21 April, before taking office. José Sarney, the Vice-President-elect, was immediately sworn in. The legitimacy of Sarney's appointment was widely questioned, since Neves had died as president-elect without ever taking office. Sarney was seen with suspicion by the civilian population as a member of the military regime's party, the National Renewal Alliance. The support of General Leônidas Pires Gonçalves, slated to be Minister of the Army in Neves' future cabinet, was decisive for Sarney taking office.
Nevertheless, as promised by Neves, Sarney led a transitional government which allowed for liberalization of the authoritarian military government. In 1986, he called for elections to form a constituent assembly, which designed and promulgated the seventh and current constitution of Brazil on November 5, 1988. A markedly liberal democratic and social democratic constitution, it prescribed first-past-the-post two-round direct elections for executive and legislative seats at the federal, state, and municipal levels, and set the date for the 1989 election. It also provided for freedom of expression and legalized formerly clandestine parties such as the Brazilian Communist Party and the Brazilian Socialist Party.
History
Most political parties were relatively new but managed to actively mobilise the population, with the election coming five years after massive demonstrations for direct elections in the late 1980s Diretas Já movement had called for the end of the military regime. Sarney was barred by the 1988 constitution from running for immediate reelection in his own right. Twenty-two candidates entered the race, a record number of candidates in a single presidential election. The 1988 elections were the first in which the president and vice-president were jointly elected as running mates.Among the twenty-two candidates, only Ulysses Guimarães and Paulo Maluf had previously run for the presidency, although Jânio Quadros planned to run but eventually dropped his candidacy. Aureliano Chaves had also previously served as vice-president. Orestes Quercia, a member of Sarney's Brazilian Democratic Movement, led the polls until he decided to drop out of the contest.. TV host Silvio Santos announced he would run just 20 days before the election, but his candidacy was mired in uncertainty and eventually revoked by the Superior Electoral Court because of a technicality.
The first round took place on November 15, 1989, the 100th anniversary of the republican coup which deposed Pedro II of Brazil and proclaimed the First Brazilian Republic. Since no candidate managed to win a majority of votes, a second round was held on December 17, featuring the two top finishers: Fernando Collor de Mello of the economically liberal right-wing populist National Reconstruction Party and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the social democratic left-wing populist Workers' Party. Collor was elected with a 6-point lead.
Both candidates had a reputation as outsiders. Despite being a charismatic leader, Lula failed to attract the majority of votes from poor, unskilled and semiskilled workers – who would, later on, form the basis of the Workers' Party electorate. These voters predominantly favored Collor, who was associated with the traditional economic elites of northeastern Brazil. Lula's support was greater among progressive intellectuals, Catholic activists, skilled industrial workers, and the college-educated middle class of the South and Southeast, despite himself being a poor immigrant from the Northeast.
Collor argued that Lula's plans of aggressive spending on inequality reduction programs would destroy Brazil's then-fragile economy, harming the poor people he claimed to champion. He also appealed to his young age and distanced himself from the previous military governments, as well as from the newer political elites who had supported the Sarney government and its Plano Cruzado, which had failed to stop hyperinflation. His strong rhetoric against corruption gained widespread support, which quickly vanished in the wake of his 1992 impeachment for corruption charges.
Lula would go on to be elected president in the 2002 elections and to win a second term in the 2006 contest. The Workers' Party also won the presidency twice more with Dilma Rousseff, a protégé of Lula, in the 2010 and 2014 elections. The party would remain in power until her impeachment in 2016 and the 2018 election of right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro.
Rede Globo debate controversy
Following the first round, Rede Globo aired a debate between Lula and Collor live. During the broadcast of primetime news program Jornal Nacional on the following day, an edited-down highlight reel of the debate was aired. Critics argued that it highlighted Collor's best moments and Lula's worst ones, and that coverage was sympathetical to Collor, who was supposedly close to Globo's CEO Roberto Marinho. The event was explored on the British Channel 4 documentary Beyond Citizen Kane, which features an interview with then head of journalism at Globo, Armando Nogueira, where he says his edit of the debate was edited so as to favor Collor and claims that after complaining to Marinho about the edit, he was dismissed from the company. Lula had long spoken out against Globo's right-wing bias and support of the dictatorship, with the PT producing a party political broadcast that claimed to be from Rede Povo. The broadcast imitated Globo's production style and continuity, even featuring a music video where many of Globo's top telenovela stars sang a pro-Lula song in the style of Globo's traditional year-end sing-alongs featuring its personalitiesSome attribute Collor's electoral victory to this particular event and other media coverage, such as a Jornal do Brasil article accusing Lula of having a bastard daughter. Later, Collor's campaign contacted Lula's ex-girlfriend and mother of the child in question and claimed that Lula had asked her to perform an abortion. This is said to be compounded by a prohibition on electoral advertising immediately preceding an election, which prevented Lula from responding to the accusations.