Consensus vital in divided Brazil

An election win is a time for victory speeches and parades, for celebration and triumph. For Brazil's re-elected president, Dilma Rousseff, it also has to be about co-operation and partnership with her opponents, defeated presidential rival Aecio Neves key among them. The nation's economy is in trouble and a continuation of the populist policies that narrowly won the left-wing leader a second four-year term could well sink it into negative growth. Working with the opposition, even adopting their market-orientated policies, will avoid government dysfunction and social discord.

Rousseff got off to a good start in her victory speech by calling for unity, consensus and dialogue. But her failure to acknowledge Neves or his centre-right Party of Brazilian Social Democracy does not bode well. She secured, after all, only 52 per cent of the vote to 48 per cent, revealing the divisions among the country's 200 million people. The splits are geographical as well as social: the welfare programmes and subsidies of the president's Workers' Party in the poor north and northeast have ensured staunch support, while the wealthy south, southeast and central-west backed Neves.

The bitter election campaign makes working together challenging. Rousseff's mandate will be the weakest of any government since the restoration of democracy in 1985 and there will be 28 parties in congress. But all sides have to set aside differences if political reforms are to be adopted and inflation, running at 6.7 per cent, tackled. A strategy to spur growth, forecast to be 0.7 per cent this year, although more likely lower given falling exports and investments and declining demand by China for commodities, has to be formulated.

Neves campaigned on fiscal restraint, a free-floating exchange rate and inflation targeting. Together, they would restore Brazil to strong growth. The country needs an open economy, a cutting of government red tape, improved infrastructure and better health care. Brazil will attain its potential only if Rousseff and her rivals set aside animosities.