The SDB is in crisis. Little remains of the party, founded in 1988 by social democrats Fernando Enrique Cardoso, Mario Covasa and Franco Montoro, among others, shortly after the fall of the dictatorship and which has remained at the center of the country’s political debate ever since, precisely because it prepared leaders to make changes. into a backwardness scenario.

This happened, for example, in 1994 when the toucans created the Real Plan and stabilized the economy. With less and less capacity for dialogue with society, the party today has become a Babylon where almost no one gets along. The result of this confusion, which began to emerge after the failure of the 2014 presidential campaign led by Esio Neves, became more pronounced on Sunday 2.

The party, which in its heyday even elected eight governors at once, as happened in 2010, this time did not elect a single one, despite the presence of toucans in the second round in four states (RS, MS, PB and PE), even if everyone would be in second place and with a small chance of being elected. The most significant defeat came to the government of São Paulo, the birthplace of the legend and where it was the dominant political force for nearly three decades. The biggest mistake here was made by advertisers who were unable to “sell” to the voters the important achievements of the administration of Joao Doria and Rodrigo Garcia.

As a result of the mistakes of the national leadership of the association, especially President Bruno Araujo, who did everything not to put forward his own presidential candidate, excluding Doria from the dispute, Tucano’s bench elected to the next legislature of the Chamber is the smallest in history: only 13 federal deputies – 35 were elected in 2018 – and the party did not elect a single new senator beyond the six it already had. “The party is getting smaller,” admits an important PSDB source. Traditionally, the party had at least 50 federal deputies and rivaled in size the then giants MDB and PT. In the 2018 elections, as Geraldo Alcmín’s presidential campaign weakened, the number of parliamentarians in the House fell to 28. The electoral failure is in no way reminiscent of the party that opposed the PT in every presidential election from 1994 to 2014. This time he limited himself to the appointment of Senator Mara Gabrilli (PSDB-SP) as deputy to Simone Tebet (MDB-MS), who came third in the dispute with just over 4% of the vote.

disagreements

Doria said the SRB’s poor performance in this year’s elections could lead to the disappearance of the party, which he says “would be a shame.” “At the moment it is the losing side,” he estimates. It is impossible to predict the outcome of the Toucan Nest crisis, but the party’s decline actually began in November 2021, after a group of MP Esio Neves (PSDB-MG) stepped up the process to undermine the former candidate’s pre-candidacy. Governor of São Paulo to the Planalto Palace, democratically determined in the party’s primaries.

The persistence of the Tucanato wing with the candidacy of the then governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Eduardo Leite, ultimately made it impossible for Doria to be nominated, a member of the party that proved more viable in the elections, even because of the important work done by his government during the pandemic. “I won the primaries and did not accept them because the national executive thought that with me there would be neither the preservation nor the increase of the federal bench of the Congress,” Doria recalled, intensifying the criticism of the national president Bruno Araujo. “I was practically forced to withdraw from the dispute, and in the end, the SRB elected far fewer deputies, with a reduction of 41%,” he told ISTOE.

With the failure of the elections on the 2nd, the internal split deepened. On Tuesday, the 4th, the National Executive in Brasilia decided to release its members in order to support whoever they wish in the second round of the presidential election. The five former party chairmen decided to support Lulu, but Governor Rodrigo Garcia announced “unconditional and personal” support for Jair Bolsonaro and Tarcisio de Freitas, the presidential candidate for governor of Sao Paulo, who now faces PT Fernando Haddad in the presidential election. second round of the competition. Doria said he would not vote. Subsequently, several Tucan leaders of the old guard announced their vote for Lulu, as was the case with Fernando Henrique. “In this second round, I vote for the history of the struggle for democracy and social integration. I vote for Luis Inacio Lulu da Silva,” said the former president. Currently, the project of reconstruction of the nest of toucans.