Silva's coalition isn't uniform green but it's about winning

Marina Silva should have been aboard a flight that crashed. She wasn't, and as a result may become president. PHOTO/AP

You mustn't expect politicians in a democratic system to come up with ideologically pure, intellectually consistent policies.

Their job is to put together a winning coalition of voters who have different and even conflicting interests, and if that requires compromises and even contradictions, so be it. But they must appear to be consistent, and Marina Silva has mastered the art.

Until last month Silva was the vice-presidential candidate of the smallest of Brazil's three main parties, with a national reputation as an environmental activist but little prospect of high political office. President Dilma Rousseff was cruising serenely towards re-election in the first round of the elections on October 5, despite the fact Brazil's once-booming economy is in a recession. And then a small plane crashed.

Marina Silva was supposed to be on that plane but changed her plans at the last moment. All seven on board died, including the presidential candidate of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), Eduardo Campos. With the election campaign under way, the PSB had no choice but to promote Silva in his place, and suddenly the election became a real race.

Silva is Bright Green: her own party, which she took into coalition with the PSB, is called the Sustainability Network. Even more importantly in a country where half the population is non-white, Silva is a "caboclo", the mixed-race combination of native Indian, black and white that is common in the Amazon. On census returns, she calls herself "black". There has never been a serious presidential contender who was black before.

Only two weeks after Silva was chosen to replace the late Eduardo Campos, she has tripled the PSB's support in the opinion polls. Now there is almost no chance Dilma Rousseff will win outright in the first round of the elections. The polls predict Silva will come second to Rousseff in that round, then win by 47 per cent to 43 per cent of the votes in the run-off three weeks later.

What would Marina Silva do as president? It's an important question, because Brazil, the world's fifth-largest country (200 million people), is going through difficult times. In the past 12 years the governing Workers' Party has lifted 40 million Brazilians out of poverty, but economic growth has stalled. Many people blame the Government's highly protectionist policies.

Silva is a plain-speaking woman with no allegations of corruption trailing her around (as they do so many other Brazilian politicians) but she has been remarkably unforthcoming on what she would do about the economy. This is because she now heads a political coalition whose major member, the PSB, is "business-friendly", as they say.

Her plans for the environment are equally obscure, beyond the well-known fact she disapproves of giant hydroelectric dams in the Amazon. She talks like a Green but her vice-presidential running mate, Beto Albuquerque, was responsible for pushing through Congress a law legalising the use of genetically modified soybeans.

She is, in other words, a "typical politician" who is trimming her sails to the prevailing wind. She accepted Albuquerque as a running mate because she needs to appeal to the agribusiness sector, which accounts for almost half of Brazil's exports and a quarter of the economy.

Indeed, Silva's economic platform is akin to that of the centre-right candidate, Aecio Neves: she would end price controls and energy subsidies, strengthen the autonomy of the central banks and "streamline" (ie, cut) the federal budget. On the other hand, despite her pursuit of business support she is still strong on environmental issues in general and against deforestation of the Amazon in particular.

This is not consistent, and ideologically pure environmentalists are already disappointed in her. Yet she has no need to apologise. She has put together a set of policies and a coalition of supporters that are inconsistent and at times contradictory but they may deliver the presidency. And that is the point of it all; without power, policies are irrelevant.

Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.