Word: collor
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...Fernando Collor eventually took over management of the family media properties in Alagoas, which today include a newspaper, several radio stations and the local affiliate of the powerful Globo private television network. In 1979, the military government of the day appointed Collor mayor of the Alagoan capital, Maceio. In 1982 he was elected a federal deputy, and in 1986 he returned to Alagoas as governor...
...Collor used the position shrewdly to create a national reputation for himself as the "hunter of maharajas" -- elite civil servants who earn exorbitant salaries, often for no-show jobs. Collor launched a campaign against the practice by setting a ceiling on officials' salaries and restricting use of state funds for the purchase of cars, houses and other amenities. The move struck a chord among ordinary Brazilians, who resent the privileges of the bureaucracy and its suffocating inefficiency...
During his presidential campaign, Collor hammered away at the antigovernment, antibureaucracy theme. He promised to privatize many of Brazil's oversize state industries, strip away excessive layers of government staffing, crack down on waste and corruption, bring the federal budget in line with reality and reduce inflation to 3% a month -- low by Brazilian standards. He also promised to spend $94 billion on housing, education and health services for the poor. Collor's resulting popularity among the country's shirt-sleeved masses, declared a bitter Lula, is undeserved. The President- elect, he predicted, "will govern in favor of big business...
There is certainly no shortage of skepticism about Collor's chances of succeeding, even though Brazil's foreign bankers generally approved of the people's choice. "No Brazilian politician has a shred of credibility in the marketplace," says Lawrence Brainard, a senior vice president at Bankers Trust, a major Brazilian creditor. "So people will simply discard what Collor said prior to elections and see what he actually does...
...Collor's skills as a political tactician will also be tested. His power base, the National Reconstruction Party, controls only a few seats in the congress. The new President will need to create alliances with centrist parties and rely on a bandwagon effect from his victory to govern effectively. Though he denies it, Collor is known to be deeply superstitious, never entering a room, for example, except with his right foot first. Now he needs to keep his right foot forward for five long years...