The Enfant Terrible

Politics offers up a range of sorry specimens — the disgraced former minister, the oleaginous adviser, the corrupt grandee — and yet few hold quite as pathetic a status as the washed-up wunderkind. Ciro Gomes’ political career has always promised to be long and bright, eminence seeming always just a few years away. Over time, as Congressman, Mayor, Governor, and Minister, he has been almost everything there is to be. The position he really desires, though, still escapes him. The young man has grown out of his youthful promise, leaving behind only the determination of an old man desperate for the presidency.

Ciro’s political career began with his run for Congress under PDS, the party of the old dictatorship; his political roots, though, run still deeper. His father was the Mayor of Sobral, a town in North-east Brazil. There is perhaps an undercurrent of regional prejudice in the Gomes family’s sobriquet ‘Colonels’; they notoriously resent the nickname, and its reference to the wealthy First Republic families whose iron grip on local politics was bought through backdoor deals. But there is nonetheless a touch of the political dynasty about them — two of Ciro’s brothers, after all, have followed their father directly into the mayoralty of Sobral. The family appears to believe they simply blessed, even burdened, with a genetic talent for running the town.

Brazilian dynasties are often a sorry bunch. The Gomes family rank well above most, with a reputation for efficiency, but ‘well above most’ is a pitifully low bar to jump. The average Gomes, however, does appear rather sharper and brighter than the caricature of the ignorant patriarch, whose knowledge of the world extends exactly as far as the town borders. Ciro, certainly, was always more cosmopolitan in outlook; his Harvard education alone places him much closer to the Brazilian tradition of modernising intellectual outsiders.

Gomes did not settle in the ranks of the PDS for long; in 1983, he jumped ship to PMDB, then distinguished more by its opposition to the dictatorship than by its current willingness to sell itself to the highest bidder. Ciro was only in his mid-twenties, but known to be opinionated and already making a name for himself, speaking at length on international politics and a range of other issues well beyond his sphere of influence.

The young man’s skills caught the eye of Tasso Jereissati, another fresh-faced politician full of promise, running to become Governor of Ceará. Gomes and Jereissati focused on cost-cutting and reducing bureaucracy. The program they somewhat ironically labelled ‘Slamming Down the Colonels’ decimated the ranks of public servants, whom they saw as representatives of its crony capitalism; their critics, meanwhile, considered the reforms to be neoliberal cuts. Neither party could be said to be wholly wrong. In 1988, Jereissati and Gomes joined were amongst those who broke from PMDB to form PSDB, a party intended to represent Brazilian social democracy, but already flirting with far more technocratic and centrist policies.

Ciro’s boldness was rewarded when the wunderkind became Mayor of Fortaleza, the capital of Ceará, and performed brilliantly, leaving office two years later with an approval rating of 77%. He then followed his ally Jereissati to become Governor of Ceará himself, continuing their project. But his policy was based on rather more than simply firings; during his time in power, the state grew steadily above the regional average, and was recognised by Unicef for its work reducing child mortality by 30%. There was not a single man in the country whose future appeared brighter.

Still in his thirties, Ciro ascended still further on the political ladder when a scandal resulted in the firing of Itamar Franco’s Finance Minister. Gomes stepped into the role. Franco and the soon-to-be President Fernando Henrique Cardoso had started the Real Plan, a daring but successful new currency project intended to address the hyperinflation that had plagued the country since the 1980s, and reached an almost comic height at 2477.15% in 1993. If entrusting the country’s precarious economy to such a young man was a gamble on Franco’s part, it paid off; Ciro’s term in office was a relatively successful and untroubled one. He had successfully distinguished himself as more than merely a self-serving power-grabber and proven himself possessed of a Midas touch for governance uncommon amongst his peers.

But the child prodigy had already begun to stall. Cardoso’s diaries described Ciro as ‘a complicated personality’. Ciro was, he comments, ‘smart and brave, but opportunistic in his positions’. Cardoso’s natural eye for personal weakness, honed by years in the cutthroat world of Brazilian politics, alighted on Ciro’s burgeoning hubris years before it would become apparent to the public. ‘He has,’ Cardoso wrote, ‘a certain folly that comes either from his youth, or from something in his character. A shame, because he is talented’.

Opportunism and folly, as much as his youthful success, has come to define Ciro. He is an explosive man, a ‘verbal machine gun’, incapable of overcoming his addiction to senseless and self-defeating machismo. Unlike almost every other politician in the country, Ciro’s legal woes are due not to corruption, but to his extensive list of libel charges. There’s not a single fight anywhere in the vast brawl of Brazilian politics that Ciro hasn’t picked; there is no temple the man doesn’t long to personally burn to the ground — not for deeply-held political beliefs, it seems, but simply to prove that he can. When there’s nothing left to burn, after all, he sets himself on fire.

His political pyromania would become the doom of both his runs for the presidency. In 1997, he embarked upon a row with Cardoso about his reelection, a violation of the original 1988 New Brazilian Constitution which had been amended by the PSDB after allegedly buying off Congress. Ciro, to the horror of everyone with a dislike of acronyms, once again switched parties, this time to the PPS. There he proposed a broad left-of-centre coalition to undermine Cardoso, which he planned would be spearheaded — of course — by Ciro himself. He was rebuffed by the perennial Workers’ Party candidate, Lula da Silva, perhaps the only person in Brazilian politics whose desire for the presidency matched Ciro’s own. Gomes, having been spurned, spent much of the campaign picking pointless fights, whilst Cardoso avoided debates, and won the election in the first round with 53% of the vote. Ciro fell a weak third with 10%.

To attribute Ciro’s verbal machine-gunning of the Cardoso presidency and his move leftwards to nothing but bitterness would be deeply ungenerous. He undeniably possessed a deep and extensive knowledge of the government’s position and events unfolding on a global level. Amongst his criticisms of Cardoso was the fact that the president’s plans only delayed an inevitable devaluation of the currency; mere months later, as the economic downturn washed over the country, his predictions came true. Nobody would mistake him for an ideological left-winger, but still fewer could doubt the sincerity of Gomes’ frustration with what he sees as the incompetence and laziness of the Brazilian elites. Less opportunistic men have kept quiet on the subject; Gomes, despite his legendary ambition, makes himself few allies and minces no words in attacking the complacency of the powerful.

He ran yet again for president in 2002, again attempting to forge a united centre-left. Lula, fully aware of his forthcoming victory, again refused him. 2002 revealed still more of Gomes’ no-longer-youthful folly and lack of self-control. Asked about the involvement of his then-wife, the actress Patricia Pillar, in his campaign, Ciro joked that “my partner has a very important role to play — she sleeps with me”. Hardly the worst sexism the country had heard from a politician, it was nonetheless both crass and cringe-inducing, and alienated his natural supporters. Ciro burned out.

The comment dogged him throughout the rest of the 2002 campaign; having been solidly in second before the remark, his support now crumbled. Attempts to apologise, to dismiss it, and to attack José Serra for his former party’s move to the right, all failed to revive his polling. The wunderkind was ageing badly. He ended the campaign in fourth place.

Nothing if not astute, Gomes cut his losses, backed Lula in the second round, and was awarded a Ministry for his trouble. Unsurprisingly, the habitual combination of guile and efficiency that had lead him through the political quagmire served him equally well in Government, and he was widely considered a good Minister. His greatest success is likely the interbasin transfer of the Rio São Francisco — a project, curiously, that put him at loggerheads with Marina Silva, now his opponent in the 2018 race.

After his Ministerial term, however, Ciro was forced to accept that Lula de Silva and his party had become the only face of centre-left politics. He went home, running for Congress under yet another party, the PSB. There, his public profile was limited to cutting remarks, several more charges of slander, and the entrenchment of his family’s power in their home state of Ceará. Broadly supportive of President Dilma Rousseff’s coronation in 2010, it must have been clear to him that he remained without a viable path to the presidency.

Moving out of politics for a while, Ciro moonlighted as a political Nostradamus. Few commentators on Brazilian politics can match the accuracy of his foresight. ‘Lula,’ he predicted in 2009, ‘will bitterly regret his coalition with PMDB’. He was right. ‘An alliance with PMDB will prevent Dilma from governing a full term,’ he said in 2014, and he was right about that, too. ‘Eduardo Cunha is probably the biggest thief this country has ever seen,’ he warned, adding that Cunha would try to become Speaker of the House; the only dispute here is whether he went far enough.

It was 2015 that provided the opportunist with opportunity; with the country beginning to boil over under the pressure of the lengthy economic and political crisis, it was clear to Ciro that the Workers’ Party was losing its grip on power, and that the space they had occupied for so long would soon be available for him to move into. Lula, of course, had never been inclined to share the spotlight, but it was clear that Rousseff did not know how to deal with the Machiavels and hyper-conservatives of Congress, and that her collapse would bring the Lula brand down with her. This was clearly Gomes’ chance.

Ciro then did what he does best; he changed parties. He now runs as the Brazilian Democratic Labour Party (PDT) candidate. Uncharacteristically, he failed to anticipate Lula’s arrest, and has remained ambivalent on the subject, but capitalised on it with characteristic style; he was quick to extend an invitation to ‘share plans’ with the darling of the Workers’ Party activists, the handsome former mayor of São Paulo, Fernando Haddad.

To the casual observer, Ciro appears to have been drifting slowly leftward for most of his life. In truth, however, he has simply been following his nose towards the only thing he cares about with any consistency; a shot at the presidency. Ciro’s politics have always gone where his political instincts have led, and 2018 is no exception. The national discourse has a wealth of liberal candidates flirting with ideas like privatising public services entirely, and yet the ‘Colonel’ of Ceará seems to grasp more intuitively than anyone what the average Brazilian wants from the economy; low inflation, high purchasing power, and effective public services.

The brilliant success of his youth came back to haunt the old man, who for years has had to step back for more experienced, more impressive politicians to have their turn. Now, however, he runs amongst a field of uncharismatic, undefined or plainly fascist candidates, and he knows it. Few Brazilian politicians can match his range of understanding or depth of intellect. But Ciro’s ideas cannot escape Ciro. They are tied to a man utterly and unflinchingly dedicated to his own spontaneous political combustion. To win, Ciro must master the habits of a lifetime to remain passionate without being incendiary; he is no longer a promising novice, and the stakes at this election are too high for ill-considered behaviour. Failure this year would doom him to one of the only titles in politics more pathetic than the wasted youth; the foolish old man who never outgrew his folly.