You can see the dichotomy of support best in this graphic from the Folha de São Paulo. The poor peripheral regions of the city, which house the majority of favelas and loteamentos irregulares, voted Marta while the wealthier residential and commercial districts went for Kassab.
See full-size graphic here.Candidate Info
Marta
Marta, of the left wing Worker’s Party, was mayor from 2000-2004 and is known for implementing an Orcamento Participativo (participatory budget), creating a system of Unified Education Centers that serve many favelas and poor neighborhoods, and integrating public transportation fares with the Bilhete Único electronic fare cards. To her discredit, she failed to make promised transportation infrastructure improvements and left the city with a pile of debt and unfinished programs. I also have qualms with the OP and education centers in practice, but they are great strides over having no programs at all.
Also critical, the city launched its first Plano Diretor under Marta’s administration, a voluminous legislative package designed to wield some pretty radical urban policy tools made legal by the federal government in 2001. These tools include special zoning protections for low income and irregular communities, processes for disappropriating under-utilized private lands for popular housing, legal instruments to regularize land tenure, and the creation of participatory councils for urbanization projects in irregular areas. Many elements of Marta’s Plano Diretor never left paper under Serra-Kassab, who later used this as an excuse to argue that the Plano should be re-written to cut out a lot of the tools housing movements were demanding be implemented.
Kassab
As his voting base reflects, Kassab is much less preoccupied with the concerns of the periphery (and not just in the geographical sense of the word). He is focused mainly on the city center and outlying business and residential districts as the engine of São Paulo’s and Brazil’s economic life. As vice mayor from 2004, ascending to mayor in 2006 when José Serra left to become governor, Kassab oversaw a series of policies that have earned him the moniker Mr. Clean, at least in my head. At its best, his penchant for a tidy metropolis is responsible for the Lei Cidade Limpa that banned all outdoor advertising in the city. At its worst, it has promoted a violent program of what housing and social activists call the higenização do centro (hygieni-ciz-ation of the city center).
I already wrote about the protests organized to condemn the inhumane treatment of the homeless population in the second half of this post back in August. But Kassab and Serra are also known for the Nova Luz program, a similar strategy to clean up a historic area of the city and make it into a powerful business district. Perhaps the most notorious part of the program is a 400-man police raid on the portion of Luz known as Cracolândia, literally Crack Land, that had the predictable consequence of simply driving drug users and traffickers west to República and Santa Cecília, while battering the homeless and forcing them to look elsewhere to improvise shelter. Kassab recently announced that revitalizing the city center on the Nova Luz model will be the principal mark of his second administration. In Luz he will further the program by attempting to give private interests power to dispossess property, identified as run down or under utilized in the Nova Luz legislation, for their commercial possession and use. He might just be successful – the municipal elections saw the city council move slightly to the right, with the Worker’s Party losing 2 seats and Kassab’s Democratas gaining 5:
Composition of São Paulo City Council, 1996-2008
PT = Worker's Party
DEM = Democratas
Full interactive graphic available from Estadão here.
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2 comments:
Bummer.
Hey, are you still thinking about starting a neighborhood newspaper type thing? I forgot to tell you; I heard about one PNG tribe doing that after they developed a written language for the first time, and it totally elevated their status among other tribes. Not really analogous to your sitation, but from a linguistics standpoint it was an interesting case study.
I'm so excited to see you- will you do some "debriefing" with me in December?
Hey Laura:
Got your comment on my blog. Now I comment on yours. Welcome home. Hope the culture shock isn't too bad. Thanks for the good analysis of the Suplicy/Kassab results. But I'm wondering: do the rich outnumber the poor in SP? Was that what gave Kassab the edge and that allowed his party to grab five additional City Council seats? Was there a green party candidate who siphoned away votes? I remember when I was there early in the year, there was much discussion of whether the greens should support Marta. The key question also is what was her margin in the periferia. And what was Kassab's in the more central areas?
How was your work in SP? And what will you be doing now? Let me know. Keep in touch.
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