TV Personality Roils Latin Election Race : Brazil: The star of a variety show is a political novice. But his entry in the presidential campaign two weeks before the voting has changed the odds.
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RIO DE JANEIRO — A popular television personality has caused an uproar by entering Brazil’s presidential campaign just two weeks before the Nov. 15 election.
The newly declared candidate, Silvio Santos, is the founder and owner of Brazil’s second-largest television network and the star of a Sunday afternoon variety show that wins the highest TV audience ratings. He has little formal education and no political experience.
Political commentators said Santos could draw large numbers of votes from candidates who are leading in the opinion polls--or that he could even win. The newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo said Santos’ candidacy “can only be viewed with consternation and anguish.”
Three political parties took steps Wednesday to challenge the legality of Santos’ entering the campaign.
Armando Correa, presidential candidate of the tiny Brazilian Municipalist Party, withdrew from the contest to give Santos his place on the Nov. 15 ballot. Because the ballots have already been printed, Santos’ name will not appear.
But an “X” alongside Correa’s name will count for Santos if the Superior Electoral Tribunal approves the switch. A ruling by the tribunal is not expected until a few days before the election.
Santos, 58, is the son of Greek immigrant street vendors. He dropped out of school in his early teens to work as a street vendor himself but later won a competition for a job reading radio commercials. That started his broadcast career, which led him to change his name from the original Senor Abravanel.
Now he is a multimillionaire and one of Brazil’s most popular entertainers, especially among the poor. The afternoon-long Silvio Santos Program includes games and quizzes for prizes, music and animated monologues by the host.
After unsuccessful negotiations with two larger parties, Santos announced his agreement Tuesday night with Correa’s party, known by its Spanish initials as PMB.
Wednesday’s issue of Folha de Sao Paulo said the paper did not question Santos’ right to run, then went on to say: “But 15 days from the vote, without the vaguest political platform, with no other party than the veritable institutional fiction of Armando Correa’s PMB, that a new candidate should emerge who is capable of abruptly changing the whole situation of succession is a fact that can only be seen with consternation and anguish.”
Political analysts said Santos could hurt candidates who are most popular with working-class voters, including centrist Fernando Collor de Mello, who has been the leader in public opinion polls.
Antonio Ermirio de Moraes, one of Brazil’s leading industrialists, predicted that the Santos candidacy, like “a monkey in a china shop,” will damage the process of presidential succession.
An opinion survey published Wednesday showed that 28% of the people interviewed favored Collor, 15% favored populist Leonel Brizola and 14% favored leftist Luis Inacio da Silva, or Lula, as he is known. Among 19 other candidates, Correa was near the bottom with a fraction of 1%.
Although this survey did not include Santos, some polls taken early in the year showed him as the most popular possible candidate.
Some political figures said President Jose Sarney helped engineer Santos’ candidacy with the goal of spoiling the chances of Collor, who has repeatedly accused Sarney’s administration of corruption.
Sarney took office in 1985 as interim president after 21 years of military rule. The Nov. 15 vote will be Brazil’s first popular presidential election since 1960. If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote, the two candidates finishing highest will meet in a Dec. 17 runoff.
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