BRAZIL: Brazil's next president will have to grapple with increasingly high levels of violence in the country's major cities.

Horrifying levels of violent crime have long afflicted Brazilians, the poor bearing the brunt of the bloodshed and the rich seeking shelter behind private guards and high walls from kidnappers and robbers. But a wave of gangster attacks of unprecedented boldness in the business capital Sao Paulo this year raised fear to a new level -- and made the problem an important factor in next Sunday's (October 1) presidential election. The assaults turned the spotlight on a host of festering woes in Latin America's largest country, from poverty and social inequality to police brutality and overcrowded prisons. Politicians from all sides were quick to excuse themselves from any responsibility, to the disgust of ordinary Brazilians. A security expert of the Candido Mendes University in Rio de Janeiro, Julita Lembruger, said that president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government decided to leave the "violence bomb" on the lap of the governors, preferring to be accused of omission rather than of incompetence. "The Lula government, in reality, chose to leave the issue of public security - I mean, this bomb - in the lap of governors. In the sense that it could more favourable to be accused of omission, than to be accused of incompetence," she said. The Sao Paulo attacks, staged by an organized crime gang called the First Command of the Capital, or PCC, hit at banks, police posts and government buildings and left the streets of the world's third-largest city deserted on some days. More than 200 people were killed, including police and gangsters. Lembruger also accused Brazil's police forces of lack of organization and intercommunication, claiming that security forces are old-fashioned and thus have to work in a different way. "It is necessary for there to be a shock of administrations inside the police. They (police forces) need to effectively work in another way. They (police forces) work in an antique manner, they work in a disordered manner, and in a unarticulated manner," said said. The number of homicides in Brazil tops 40,000 per year, more than the death toll in Iraq, while street hold-ups and armed raids on apartment blocks are routine. In March, troops backed by tanks occupied slums in Rio in an anti-crime sweep. In addition a series of attacks against tourists were registered in the past months in the world-famous city. The refrain is heard across much of Brazil and especially in Sao Paulo and in Rio de Janeiro, where drug gangs rule the slums and shoot-outs often spill over into city streets. For Antonio Romeu impunity is one of the main triggers of violence. "Violence, for me, is a consequence of impunity, for sure," he said. Silvana Araujo, in the other hand, believes that the unequal distribution of riches is one of the main problems when the subject is violence. "The unequal distribution of riches ends up leading to violence," she said. The political impact hit hardest at Geraldo Alckmin of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party, or PSDB, who was Sao Paulo state governor for five years until he resigned to run for president. Polls showed many voters, notably in the middle-class, believed his administration had failed them. Lula, who has enjoyed a commanding lead in polls, has accused previous governments of not spending enough money on improving social conditions, opening way to criminality. He wants to strengthen cooperation between state and federal authorities and to make more use of a paramilitary National Security Force.

ITN Source | September 26, 2006

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