It shocks Brazil. The repeats a pattern, seen since the 2000s, with a long list of governors arrested and dismissed. The economy of Rio de Janeiro is not a good example either. Despite having the second largest GDP in the federation, wasteful governments and fluctuations in the price of oil led Rio to bankruptcy.
Much is said about the creation of Brasília as the cause of this decadence. But the former federal capital continued to host large state-owned companies and autarchies, given to the BNDE(S). The military regime helped Rio by expanding the weight of the public sector in the economy, creating several state-owned companies in the city and transforming Petrobras into a giant. The Rio-Niterói Bridge, at the time the largest in the world, was a symbol of that great Brazil project.
Rio’s failure began in the 1980s, marked by the external debt crisis, when the national state ran out of means to continue investing in industry. occurred in those years. Very dependent on federal resources, Rio de Janeiro suffered the crisis of the lost decade.
The following decade was also bad for the economy of Rio de Janeiro. The commercial opening implemented by Collor and Itamar increased the productivity of the economy as a whole. However, regions with many companies vulnerable to external competition faced serious social problems, . Grande Rio is at the top of that list. Somewhat emblematically, Avenida Brasil, the city’s former industrial belt, is now the scene of wars between factions.
The economic decline unfolded while Leonel Brizola ruled the state, occupying the left, a field in which the PT established itself as hegemonic in the rest of the country. The regional submission to the former governor was evident in the 1998 elections. The national PT forced the state directory to join the coalition of the then Brizolista Anthony Garotinho, in exchange for the Lula-Brizola ticket in the presidential contest. The intervention did not go down well with PT members from Rio de Janeiro and explains, to a large extent, the departure to PSOL in the following decade.
Rio’s PT declined. Garotinho’s former deputy, PT member Benedita da Silva lost the state government in a landslide to Rosinha Garotinho, in 2002. In the following elections, either the party was a supporting player in coalitions, or suffered dismal results.
If the PT withered on the left, the PSDB disappeared on the right. The tucanos took flight in the state with the election of Marcello Alencar, in 1994. But the governor was unable to elect his deputy, Luiz Paulo, who came in third place in the following election, behind former mayor Cesar Maia and the winner Garotinho. The detail is that everyone mentioned in this paragraph threw themselves into politics as brizolistas. In the following decade, Sérgio Cabral and Eduardo Paes – indirect creations of Brizola – exchanged the then opposition PSDB and PFL for the government PMDB.
The national dispute between PT and PSDB never took place in earnest in Rio. In its place, a large coalition emerged concentrated around the PMDB. With the support of the federal government, linked to organized crime and based on a multitude of corruption schemes, this government machine dominated regional politics for a long time, electing people like Cabral and Pezão.
The opposition to the left was in charge of the small PSOL. By joining the PSB, the biggest party nationally, ex-PSOL Marcelo Freixo achieved a reasonable result in 2022, although insufficient to prevent that. Castro won with the help of the corruption scheme that recently made him ineligible.
On the right, the evangelical leader Marcelo Crivella stood out in the opposition, who ran in the state’s second round in 2014 and won Rio’s mayorship two years later. The bishop did not leave good memories, by the way. The obscure Wilson Witzel ticket won the government in 2018, driven by Bolsonaro’s extremist tide — whose political origins are from Rio, in fact.
The sudden arrival of the extreme right to power has thrown Rio’s politics into disarray. Witzel was deposed in a summary impeachment trial. Once in office, Castro governed with the Alerj (Legislative Assembly of the State of Rio de Janeiro), which is made up of members of the former government coalition, now joined by Bolsonarists, and known to be infiltrated by the militias and the Red Command.
Democracies need serious, purposeful and active oppositions, capable of winning elections and, thus, putting pressure on governments at the polls to deliver good public policies. To a certain extent, this occurred at the national level with the dispute between PSDB and PT during the presidencies of FHC and Lula. The opposite happened in Rio de Janeiro. Without serious opposition, the state government has become increasingly inept and mafia-like, having long been unable to reverse the state’s deep economic and social ills.
