The Gap-toothed Power Broker
Known as ‘Bad Tony’:
Profile of Antonio Carlos Magalhães [1]
April 19, 1999
Introduction
This
is the story of a shrewd politician who has, for 45 years, managed to adeptly maneuver
between the complexity of Brazilian politics to emerge as the most powerful
politician in
What
follows is an attempt to trace the political trajectory of Antonio Carlos Magalhães, known to be guarded about his life, despite his
gregariousness as a political campaigner, and about whom not much is written.
(A Bahian doctoral candidate at the Instituto Universitário de Pesquisa do
Entry
into Politics
Antonio
Carlos Peixoto de Magalhães
was born in 1927 in
Magalhães’ power has been described as based on “a genius for politics,
ruthlessness, and deft timing in negotiating
Under
President João Figueiredo,
ACM was a part of the group, along with José Sarney,
that at the last minute broke away from the military faction, the Partido Democratico Social (PDS)
in 1984, to form the Partido da
Frente Liberal (PFL). The PDS was the 1979
reincarnation of the ARENA party that had provided the partisan support for the
military regime (Mainwaring 1997, 67-8). By this time, Magalhães
was no longer governor of
Magalhães the Entrepreneur
Part
of the ‘reward’ for his support of Neves was the post
of Minister of Communications in the civilian government of José Sarney, who made good on Neves’
political debts. Neves had also enjoyed strong
support from Roberto Marinho, the owner of the Globo television network during the campaign, which was
crucial in a country where television is the primary means of mass
communication, particularly because of the high rate of functional illiteracy
(Page 1995, 169). Magalhães is very close friends
with Marinho. Magalhães
became the strongest member of Sarney’s cabinet and
one of his chief advisers (Chaffee 1998, 154). Globo’s
support for Sarney continued after he assumed the
presidency upon Neves’ untimely death; Marinho went on to make some profitable business deals with
the government (Page 1995, 172).
As
Minister of Communications, Magalhães made the shrewd
business deal of acquiring
Today,
the Magalhães family controls the largest
communications group in North and Northeast Brazil, comprising some 14
companies—including a Bahian newspaper, Correio da Bahia, which does not hesitate to praise ACM in the
editorial pages—with 1997 revenues of (the equivalent of) R$132m, and net
profits of R$10m. The president of the controlling company is ACM’s son,
Antonio Carlos Magalhães Jr.[4]
The
Emperor of
Magalhães’ power base is
Though
he is no longer in the state government, his third and so far last stint of
governor being 1990-4, after which he was elected as senator, popular wisdom
has it that he handpicked his successor, Paulo Souto.
Angus Foster in a 1996 survey of Bahia in the Financial Times, claims that Magalhães retains “an iron grip on the state,” a charge
repeated by The Economist, who
described ACM as “an ageing, portly but forceful former governor of [Bahia], and now one of its national senators… he runs Bahia as his private fief.”[6] Even if these aspersions are not completely
justified, his hold on Bahian politics is such that
political divisions in the state are referred to as Carlista
and anti-Carlista (drawing on his second name
Carlos).[7]
Foster also reports that Magalhães’ “opponents often
claim he is partly responsible for Bahia’s
underdevelopment.”
But
Bahia cannot fairly be described as a total disaster
in terms of its economy. Huge state investments in the 1970s, when ACM was
first elected governor, were channelled into a petro-chemical complex near Salvador, installed by the
military government; it is Brazil’s largest.
Since 1980, Bahia’s industrial output, aided
by big private investment ventures in chemicals, pulp and paper, is up 64%. An
ambitious tourism plan that was started in 1991 to capitalize on Bahia’s cultural riches has met with great success. More
recently, the first planned resort in Brazil, to be located on the Bahian coast, with an initial US$215m price tag, was
launched.[8]
There has certainly been growth in the tourism industry, judging from the
increase in international flights coming into Salvador, from one per week in
1991 to 23 per week in 1998.[9]
In
1998, Bahia stood out as the Brazilian state to gain
the most competitiveness at the national level, making it the seventh most competitive
state, an achievement attributed to development trends in tourism, industry and
public services.[10] A
1998 Ernst & Young report claimed that Bahia has
the fastest-growing per capita income in Latin America.[11]
Education is the stated “top priority” for Bahia’s
state government, with plans to lift enrolment rates in primary schools from
80% to 98% by 2002, and in secondary schools from 22% to 40%.[12]
According
to Magalhães himself, “if Bahia
is changing as they say, it’s thanks to me”[13]
The
Conservative and the Dependentista: Magalhães and Cardoso
It
is widely acknowledged that Fernando Henrique Cardoso won the presidency of Brazil in 1994 based on the
success of his Real Plan (Roett 1997, 20). The Real
Plan, as intelligently designed as it was, however, would never have been
allowed to be implemented, were it not for the support of the political parties
of the centre-right, especially the PFL (Resende-Santos
1997, 186). Their legislative support was key to the passing of the drastic
reform measures in Congress. Indeed, Resende-Santos
argues that the PFL may actually have pressured Cardoso
“to go much faster and further than he may have wanted or anticipated,” given
his own (Cardoso’s) “socially necessary” concerns (Ibid, 186). This was in marked contrast
to Magalhães’s open opposition to President Itamar Franco’s economic reform proposals (Chaffee 1998,
22).
Cardoso’s candidacy for the presidency could well have been futile were it not
for the PFL, who delivered millions of votes for him from Bahia,
where Cardoso was unknown.[14]
Cardoso repaid the PFL’s
support by choosing as his vice president PFL Senator Marco Maciel.
At the time of the elections, observers thought the ideological differences
between the two men would augur a break once Cardoso
won the presidency. However, this view was rejected by Magalhães’
political opponents in Bahia, some of whom were once
his allies; it is reported that one such former ally cautioned that ACM is a
dangerous man to betray, stating, “Some of us still don’t sleep well, even
years later.”[15]
Nevertheless,
Cardoso has continued to seek and receive support
from Magalhães and the PFL, at the same time as,
ironically, he faces a great deal of opposition from his own party. Cardoso’s reliance on Magalhães’
support could even be suggested as dependency. Support for this argument can be
inferred from an interesting situation which arose in 1995. When a private Bahian bank, Banco Economico, went bust, Cardoso,
confronted and threatened by Magalhães, was about to
give in to ACM’s demands that the bank be bailed out by the Central Bank but
handed over to the state government to control. The entire board of the Central
Bank threatened to resign in response, and Cardoso
personally was caught between the two, desperately trying to find a solution to
please them both.[16]
(The crisis was eventually resolved by a deal where a São
Paulo bank, in partnership with a Swiss bank, took control, with capital from
the Central Bank.)[17]
At
face value, Cardoso and Magalhães
would appear to be irreconcilably different. Their political ideologies and
trajectories are diametrically opposed—especially when one considers that Cardoso went into exile under the rule of the military
government, of which Magalhães was a mainstay. They
even differ in their political style: on his first day as interim president of
Brazil, Magalhães gave an informal press conference
in the president’s chambers, in which Cardoso himself
never grants press conferences.[18]
Yet it remains that “the most powerful conservative group, the PFL,
representing the most traditional social interests in the country, is the
principal advocate of market-oriented reforms” (Roett
1997, 28).
Despite
this apparently happy tale of opposites working together, this ideological
diversity has posed problems for Cardoso: Cardoso’s hopes of accelerating land reform are opposed by
the largely landowning leaders of the PFL.[19]
Similarly, the PFL is not pro-reform in the area of political institutional
changes. Nevertheless, the PFL continues to strongly support economic
liberalization and market reforms (Roett 1997, 27).
As Riordan Roett puts it:
The economic philosophy of the party [the PFL]
favors the modernization of the national economy, competitiveness, and
increased foreign investment; but the leadership does not appear to see any
linkage between a more efficient and productive economy and the probable need
for more democratic and representative institutions in Brazil. (Ibid, 28)
Conclusion:
President of Brazil, Antonio Carlos Magalhães?
Magalhães appears to be interested in presenting himself as a viable alternative
for the succession of President Cardoso in 2002. Luis
Eduardo, his son, who was widely seen as the natural inheritor of ACM’s
political maquina, was already planning his campaign for
the presidency in 2002, when he died suddenly in April 1998.[20]
Antonio
Carlos Magalhães is perhaps the ultimate
personification of the complexities and paradoxes of the Brazilian political
system. He broke from one political party to form another at just the right
time, so that he carried his power and influence over from the military to the
civilian regime. That timely support for Neves and Sarney won him a strategic ministry that provided access to
an extremely profitable business venture, and the power to make the conditions
for the expansion of that sector opportune. The state under his heavy-handed
control, Bahia, is apparently on the verge of real
economic and social progress. He backed Cardoso, his
ideological opposite, and in so doing brought to power perhaps the most
progressive president in Brazilian history. He continues to throw his support
behind Cardoso’s decidedly anti-populist reforms,
despite having built his political base on traditional, conservative politics.
In an extremely fragmented and incoherent political system—which has served
ACM’s interests well—his party, the PFL, is one of only two coherent parties in
Brazil (the other is the PT, Partido dos Trabalhadores).
The
phenomenon of an Antonio Carlos Magalhães is more
about the Brazilian political system than about ACM himself, however. As Angus
Foster astutely observes, the Brazilian political system, organized as it is
around individuals instead of ideology, “by allowing Mr. Magalhães’
preeminence, has stunted the development of effective opposition and interest
groups to represent the many excluded sectors of society. But most opposition
politicians, on the occasions they have held power, have employed the same
populist initiatives Mr. Magalhães has perfected.”[21]
References
Chaffee,
Wilber Albert. 1998. Desenvolvimento: Politics and Economy in Brazil.
Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Mainwaring,
Scott. 1997. “Multipartism, Robust Federalism, and Presidentialism in Brazil.” In Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America, edited
by Scott Mainwaring and Matthew Shugart, 55-109.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Page,
Joseph. 1995. The Brazilians.
Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Resende-Santos, João. 1997. “Fernando Henrique Cardoso: Social and
Institutional Rebuilding in Brazil.” In Technopols: Freeing
Politics and Markets in Latin America in the 1990s, edited by Jorge
Dominguez, 145-194. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State
University Press.
Roett, Riordan. 1997. “Brazilian Politics at Century’s End.” In Brazil Under Cardoso,
edited by Riordan Roett and Susan Kaufman Purcell,
19-41. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
[1] Ian Simpson, “Brazil’s ‘Bad Tony’ heavyweight in reform brawl,” Reuters North American Wire, 10 February 1995.
[2] Abreu, Alice Rangel de Paiva. Letter to author, 13 April 1999.
[3] Ian Simpson, Ibid.
[4] “Magalhães led group integrates partners,” Gazeta Mercantil Online, 24 June 1998.
[5] The Americas: Brazil. The Economist, 29 August 1998, 5.
[6] International: Brazil. The Economist, 26 August 1995, 8.
[7] Angus Foster, “Survey – Brazil and the state of Bahia: Mirror to the motherland,” Financial Times, 6 June 1996, 6.
[8] The Americas: Brazil. The Economist, 29 August 1998, 5.
[9] Marcia Guena, “Salvador receives new airline companies,” Gazeta Mercantil Online, 2 July 1998.
[10] “Bahia State gains most in competitiveness,” Gazeta Mercantil Online, 4 September 1998.
[11] Rosalind Mclymont, “Brazil’s Bahia touts itself as center for manufacturing and distribution,” Journal of Commerce, 27 May 1998, 13C.
[12] The Americas: Brazil. The Economist, 29 August 1998, 38.
[13] Angus Foster, “Survey – Brazil and the state of Bahia: Senator with staying power,” Financial Times, 6 June 1996, 7.
[14] Angus Foster, “Cardoso looks to help of ‘sovereign ruler’: ACM, the Brazilian politician who can deliver millions of votes for the president,” Financial Times, 1 October 1994, 2.
[15] Ibid.
[16] International: Brazil. The Economist, 26 August 1995, 8.
[17] Angus Foster, “Survey – Brazil and the state of Bahia: A victim of stability,” Financial Times, 6 June 1996, 8.
[18] Luis Eduardo Leal, “Magalhães assumes presidency and criticizes MST,” Gazeta Mercantil Online, 19 May 1998.
[19] Angus Foster, “Survey – Brazil and the state of Bahia: An increasingly tangled web,” Financial Times, 6 June 1996, 3.
[20] “Obituary of Luis Eduardo Magalhães, politician who held together the broad coalition which has boosted Brazil’s economy,” Daily Telegraph, 30 April 1998, 35.
[21] Angus Foster, “Survey – Brazil and the state of Bahia: Mirror to the motherland,” Financial Times, 6 June 1996, 6.