The Observer

Gubernatorial elections took place in eleven of Brazil's twenty-two states October 3. They showed a trend to the left, but not to the radical left. They solved some of the government's problems, but they created others.

Problems were solved for the Federal government in Guanabara, where the city of Rio de Janeiro is situated, and in the state of Minas Gerais, a powerful and rapidly developing area just northeast of Guanabara.

Carlos Lacerda, governor of Guanabara, and Magalhaes Pinto, governor of Minas Gerais, have both been running hard to become President of Brazil in 1966 when Castello Branco is scheduled to step down.

Lacerda and Pinta staked their political reputations on candidates running to succeed them. The candidates both men were backing lost. Negrao de Lima beat Lacerda's candidate Flexa Ribeiro in Guanabara. Israel Pinheiro crushed Magalhaes' gubernatorial candidate, Roberto Resende in Minas Gerais.

These defeats made strategists of the Federal government happy. While Magalhaes and Lacerda nominally belong to the party that is supporting the government, the Democratic National Union, in fact both men have been bitterly attacking Castello Branco in their efforts to become President.

Now, unless political conditions in the county change drastically, neither of these two men is given much hope of attaining national power.

The opposition to government candidates in ten of the eleven states (including Guanabara and Minas Gerais) came from candidates backed by a coalition of the Social Democratic Party--a tame opposition that votes with the government in the Federal congress--and the Brazilian Workers Party, a more potent opposition group.

As of October 6, this left-of-center coalition was winning in ten states. This would seem to indicate a massive vote of no confidence against the Federal government, installed by a group of rightist generals after they ousted Jango Goulart from the presidency in April, 1964.

In most of the states the elections hinged on local issues. But the rigid anti-inflationary policies of the Federal government have put a hard squeeze on Brazil's working population, whose wages are being held down while the cost of living continues to rise. So while the defeat of government candidates was not the blanket condemnation of the new regime that it might seem, it still indirectly indicated strong currents of disapproval of government policy. Thus in the three states where national issues were at stake: Minas Gerais, Guanabara, and Goias, the Federal government's candidates were defeated.