Padilha falters, loses his way, and succumbs to the boos from the streets.
The pre-candidacy of the Minister of Health for the government of São Paulo in 2014 should be shelved; last month, he was Lula's preferred candidate, but when Brazil changed, he was swept away by the streets; Alexandre Padilha first defended and then abandoned the idea of bringing Cuban doctors to Brazil; he failed to garner any support for the Mais Médicos program, enacted as a Provisional Measure; and he attracted the wrath of entities and authorities in the field, as well as the irony of thousands of young health professionals; he became a burnt-out lamppost before the first light bulb was even turned on.
247 - Health Minister Alexandre Padilha had almost two years, since the election of Mayor Fernando Haddad, to transfer his electoral domicile from Santarém, in Pará, to São Paulo, where he dreams of being a candidate for governor for the PT in 2014.
"I'm not thinking about that now," Padilha told reporters on the day Haddad was elected.
Now, less than a month after returning to vote in São Paulo – and insisting on his lack of interest in elections – as a politician, and as a minister, Padilha is already facing his worst moment. A moment capable of including him in what some call the Pearl Harbor effect, whereby a pre-candidacy is shot down before it even takes off, as happened with the American planes bombed on the ground by the Japanese in World War II.
The intense controversies surrounding the Mais Médicos program, enacted as a Provisional Measure, and the Medical Act, approved by Congress, simply struck like lightning on this so-called political figurehead whom former President Lula had been considering as the PT's candidate for governor of São Paulo. It short-circuited. It burned out.
As is known, it will be Lula, and only he, who will indicate the party's candidate in 2014. The former president was concerned about the lack of a strong mark left by the Dilma government in the health sector, but in the days leading up to the student protests in June, a strong rumor circulated that Padilha had definitively become Lula's chosen candidate.
Since then, however, Brazil has changed – and Padilha has been swept up by the tide of change.
After its approval in Congress, the negative reaction to the Medical Act among entities and professionals in the field, who held protests against the legislation and the Minister of Health in almost the entire country, showed how poorly its content was discussed, to say the least. Without the slightest consensus, the text immediately attracted the ire of the sector's main leaders, including authorities.
LOST ON THE FIELD - "Veto everything!", said the president of the Federal Council of Medicine, Roberto D'Ávila, to the minister during a late-night phone call this week, in which Padilha was belatedly trying to quell the fury of the medical community regarding the presidential vetoes to be announced. This attempt, as it turned out, was unsuccessful. Upon learning that President Dilma had vetoed the article granting doctors exclusive rights to make diagnoses and administer injections, the opposition intensified. Earlier, the long, never-ending saga of hiring Cuban doctors, a possibility opened up by the "More Doctors for Brazil" program, created as a Provisional Measure, revealed Padilha to be lost in the game.
First, he was the biggest advocate for the arrival of foreign professionals from the socialist island, but he had already forgotten to coordinate with the other interested parties. Faced with the booing he received even in the streets, where the correct proposal was distorted by an ideological lens, Padilha, instead of strengthening its defense, simply abandoned it. He replaced the Cubans, without prior notice and without any formal explanation to society (where, of course, there was a large base of support for the proposal), with a sham of negotiations with Spain and Portugal – these, in turn, were also abandoned halfway through, with the minister who was supposed to take a plane to deal with the initial disembarkation details having stayed in Brazil even after making unpleasant phone calls.
Even without going into the merits of the Medical Act and the More Doctors program, what stands out is Alexandre Padilha's lack of skill and firmness in leading the entire process – and the equally clumsy way in which he is trying, without clearly stating his moves, to mitigate the widespread outcry against these initiatives. He is proving to be a communication failure, at the very least.
At a time when the last thing President Dilma Rousseff needs is more problems, Padilha created a major one, which is having negative repercussions for the government. Even José Serra, who considers himself the best Minister of Health of all time, has resumed his role – one of his favorites.
Padilha hampered the government and helped its adversaries with ideas that were both simple and revolutionary – such as placing experienced and trained Cuban professionals in remote areas of Brazil, ready to raise the standard of national public health, as well as giving professionals in the sector more freedom of movement in the field, an attempt to address the chronic shortage of doctors in the country. However, by engaging in ideological debate, failing to support a technical proposal, and generating a political crisis of considerable proportions, Padilha disappointed spectacularly and became one less political figurehead.