Democracy Party...political parties

Although this blog is devoted to express my opinions on economic and public policy issues, I have decided that my first post will be about politics (I might do that once in a while). The reason is that today is the day of the first round of municipal elections in Brazil and I have gladly came back from the voting place. The last time I had registered my vote was in 2004 because coincidently I haven´t been in Sao Paulo in electoral years since then.

There are about 5.500 cities in Brazil and more than 15.000 candidates running for the mayor post. I live in Sao Paulo, the largest city in Brazil with more than 10 million people and about 8 million voters. As traditionally happens, the electionin Sao Paulo  has been quite competitive and three candidates have good chances to move to the second round, according to opinion polls:

i)                 Jose Serra (from PSDB party): he was mayor and governor of Sao Paulo state, as well as senator and he has run twice for the presidency, in 2002 (defeated by Lula) and in 2010 (defeated by Ms. Dilma Rousseff).

ii)                Fernando Haddad (Workers´ party…in portuguese so called PT ): he was ministry of Education during Lula´s mandate and before he served as subsecretary of finance and Development of Sao Paulo prefecture.

iii)               Celso Russomano: he was deputy and he is mainly known as a journalist in which he hosted TV program supporting consumers who felt themselves in trouble against bad public or private services.

According to opinion surveys, the four main problems stressed by the population of Sao Paulo are: public transport (on a general basis, transport venues since traffic jam is a daily problem), followed by health, safety and education. Actually these public policy issues  are concerns expressed by  most Brazilians, and I intend to make remarks on them on a regular basis.

One of the objectives of this blog is to evaluate the current public policies objectively, therefore I will avoid being influenced by personal political view. Furthermore, I challenge myself to make proposals to improve the quantity and quality of those policies, in terms of cost-benefit analysis at socioeconomic point of view not just looking at the short and medium run, but at the long-run “heritage” for the next generations of Brazilians.