Governor Alckmin to lead Brazil’s PSDB into election

BRASILIA: The centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) elected fourtime Sao Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin as its leader on Saturday, making him its most likely presidential nominee in next year’s elections.

Alckmin threw the party’s weight behind a social security overhaul that is currently before congress and would cut generous pensions for public-sector employees.

“Pension reform is necessary so we do not have two classes of Brazilian citizens,” he told the convention, which elected him by a 470-3 vote.

Alckmin said former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a likely rival in the 2018 race, had led Brazil into its worst recession and biggest corruption scandal.

“Lula wants to return to the scene of the crime,” he told cheering supporters. “Be sure, we will defeat him at the polls.”

Alckmin was picked to unite a divided party, with both supporters and opponents of Brazil’s unpopular President Michel Temer.

He plans to complete the PSDB’s withdrawal from the governing coalition.

But Alckmin made it clear the PSDB would back Temer’s pension proposal, which investors consider crucial for closing a huge budget deficit that cost Latin America’s largest economy its investment-grade credit rating.

With elections less than a year away, PSDB politicians want to distance themselves from Temer.

Half of its 46 congress people did not back him when the lower house voted in August to block corruption charges against him. – Reuters