Ciro Gomes joins Brazil presidential race
The Democratic Labor Party—PDT in the original Portuguese acronym—has officially unveiled Ciro Gomes’s bid for the presidency of Brazil. The announcement was made Wednesday afternoon (Jul 20).
This is his fourth attempt to reach the post. In the last elections, in 2018, the 64-year-old economist came third, with just over 13 million votes, 12.47 percent of the electorate. Ciro, as he is usually referred to in Brazil, also ran for president in 1998 and 2002.
“I want to bring the country together around a new project,” Ciro said in his speech at the party convention, citing his book Projeto Nacional: O Dever da Esperança (“National Project: The Duty of Hope,” in a literal translation), which is said to outline his government project. In his address, he proposed a tax reform to redress inequalities, with riches paying proportionally more taxes than the poor.
At the convention, Ciro Gomes also criticized plans to privatize Petrobras and advocated the end of the current pricing policy at the state-controlled oil giant, which attaches the price of fuel sold in Brazil to the dollar.
The presidential hopeful also argued for the end of the cap on public spending, a limit introduced in the Brazilian Constitution. “It will be revoked in the first hours of our potential administration,” he said. In his view, the spending cap is an “arbitrary and elitist” move to “slash the investment in people’s lives, leaving the interest paid to bankers untouched.”
Bio
Ciro Ferreira Gomes was born in São Paulo but built his political career in Ceará state, Northeast Brazil. In 1988, he served as mayor of Fortaleza, its capital city, and became state governor in 1990. In 1994, he stepped down to take the helm of the Ministry of the Economy under President Itamar Franco (1992–1994), after being appointed by the Brazilian Social Democracy Party, or PSDB, Ciro’s party at the time. From 2003 to 2006, Ciro was minister for Social Integration under then President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He left the post to run for federal representative and was elected. He also served two mandates as state representative in Ceará. Ciro Gomes has four children.
