Brazilian politics sound strange. How would you guys paint the two main parties? Left wing? Big tent? Economic liberal/conservative?
It's... complicated. I'll try to explain, but there's probably someone who can do that a lot better than me.
There are a lot of parties, small and big. If compared with the american system, I'd say most of them are left wing. What may seem stranger to you is that a lot of those parties are also conservative. Most parties are not liberal at all, with very few exceptions, and even those are in favour of government interference on a lot of things. Basically:
- Most of them are pro social programs.
- Most of them call themselves socialist.
- Some of them are clearly religious, and even put that on the party name. Things like "Christian Socialist Party". Those are, most of the times, conservative, of course.
- There are a few crazy super-socialist/communist parties. There was one super-crazy right-wing party, but it disbanded a few years ago. There are few right-wing parties, but I don't think a lot of people take those seriously.
- However, there ARE some super-crazy right wing candidates on some parties.
Oh, yeah, there's this really confusing thing, that on elections, parties form alliances, so they can get favors, money or more advertisement time on TV and reach more people. Each party has an allocated free adversiment time on TV and radio, near the elections. Some parties do not have candidates for some things, so we can have a president candidate from one party that helps an governor candidate from another party's campaign, for example.
If I had to choose, I'd say the three biggest parties we have are PT, PSDB and PMDB. The first one is a bit more left-wing than others, and is currently on power, since 2003. The second one is a bit more liberal, and was on power from 94 to 2002.
And PMDB... is the one who always allies to whoever is on the power. It has a lot of known corrupt politicians, but has a lot of influence. It was allied with PT on the last elections, and our vice-president is from that party, but currently it's divided between supporting the government and being the opposition. It's kinda clear the vice-president is preparing himself to be the president.
One thing to take into consideration is that... candidates, here, sometimes are on parties that have nothing to do with what they believe. You can find right-wing candidates on parties that call themselves socialist, for example. Sometimes, its all because of the money.
There is a big problem here, with a considerable amount of people not really feeling represented by any party. It's pretty confusing, and some people pretty much ignore parties at all and vote for the candidates. There are a few new parties showing up now, but it's not THAT easy to form a party to participate the elections.
