João Santana: ‘Me and Ciro suffered our biggest defeat’ – 05/20/2023 – Politics

Marketer João Santana uses superlatives to refer to his experience with Ciro Gomes (PDT) in the 2022 election: he says he had never worked with a candidate so prepared to preside over Brazil, but it was also alongside him that he experienced the worst moment of your career.

“Ciro and I suffered the biggest electoral defeat in our personal histories together, but that doesn’t destroy us”, says Santana in an interview with Sheetthe first since he returned to electoral marketing after amending campaigns for the PT and ending up being arrested for Operation Lava Jato.

“In life, as in politics, some defeats are inevitable. The important thing is how to face them”, summarizes the journalist from Bahia.

He, who took care of the campaigns of Lula (2006) and Dilma Rousseff (2010 and 2014), blames the polarized scenario of 2022 and the scarcity of resources for the downfall of Ciro. The pedetista had the worst performance of his four presidential candidacies, with 3% of the votes and fourth place.

“Without anyone’s demerit, I’ve never had a candidate at Ciro’s level. I’ve never lived with a person who I thought, thought and thought was more qualified, more accurate, to be president of Brazil”, says Santana, who ended his contract with the PDT after the second round.

His company and Mônica Moura, his wife, received R$ 11.4 million for the campaign, according to the rendering of accounts to the Electoral Justice. In Dilma’s re-election, R$ 70 million were passed on to the partners through legal channels, and R$ 35 million through slush funds.

According to the marketer, the illegal practice continues to exist, but he refuses to reveal names on the grounds that he has no evidence.

“I can say that there was a campaign in 2022 that marketing didn’t receive a penny of cash, which was ours, but I can’t say that this happened in all. conversations [existem]”, he states.

Santana and Mônica closed a plea deal in 2017. They returned around BRL 80 million, served sentences in closed and semi-open regimes, wore ankle bracelets and still provide community services. They were banned from working with electoral communication until the end of 2020.

INDESTRUCTIBLE FRIENDSHIP, MERCURIAL CIRUS AND ‘RARA AVIS’

According to the journalist, who had already publicly praised Ciro, it was the former minister who sought his services. “I saw a chance to work with someone I believed in deeply.”

Until then, without proximity, the two established a partnership that became “indestructible friendship” — not only with affinities around politics, but also music and literature.

Santana, who after that already received visits from Ciro and family at his beach house on the outskirts of Salvador, finds it difficult that the former presidential candidate never runs again, as he insinuated in a lecture a few days ago in Lisbon, when saying that he “does not represent another current of opinion” in Brazil.

“Ciro is like every instigating, emotional and mercurial person: just as he makes very strong self-praises, he makes very profound self-criticisms. But, regarding this supposed end of Ciro’s political career, I find it very difficult for Ciro Gomes to give up politics and politics give up on Ciro Gomes”, he says.

“If that happens, the big loser is Brazil, which is already experiencing a profound leadership crisis and a tragedy of enormous conceptual and symbolic emptiness. Ciro is a ‘rare bird’ in national and continental politics. mediocrity, mistakes and self-indulgence that dominate much of the Brazilian scene. I say that with full knowledge of the facts”, he adds.

The man who participated in 11 presidential elections, with 8 victories in 7 countries, says that he also always believed in Lula and Dilma, but makes a difference when talking about 2022: “Ciro has a much more efficient, intelligent and modern project for the Brazil than Lula”.

COWARDICE, ‘CIRINHO PEACE AND LOVE’ AND HOSTILE ENVIRONMENTS

Santana considers that there are elections in which the presence of a candidate like Ciro fits with the feeling of change expressed by the electorate, but this was not the case in 2022.

For him, the obstacles involved the polarization between Lula and Jair Bolsonaro (PL), but also the internal resistance to Ciro in the PDT and a framework —unprecedented in his career— of limited structure, with “squalid 52 seconds” of TV advertising and little money for social networks.

“Not that, if we had all the means, it would mean that Ciro would win, but he would have a great chance not only of having a better performance but also of going to the second round.”

Santana agrees that the 2022 dispute should be defined “as the election of hatred and fear”, but assesses that “it was mainly the election of cowardice”, a feeling that dominated many layers of the population. “And unfortunately most of them are likely to vote for Ciro”, he says.

“There was the cowardice of voting and him losing and the change, for the comfort they imagined they had acquired under that protective wing of the first electoral option.”

Despite this, the consultant says he would not change anything from the strategy he outlined. A technical and overbearing campaign, he analyzes, would be swallowed up by the fratricidal war between Lula and Bolsonaro — nor would it be the pedetista’s style. The easiest mistake to make would be to try to forge “a Cirinho peace and love”.

“Many wanted that,” he says, in a tone of astonishment. “Or else a Ciro with timid reformist pills, tailor-made to satisfy all tastes. That would be absurd. Now, Ciro has a difficulty: he doesn’t react well to hostile environments.” And he corrects himself: “I didn’t react. It’s getting better every day”.

The path was “to make noise, something combative”, with “forceful, political, moral and administrative speech, with bold but seductive proposals, and at the same time of permanent combat on both sides”.

The attacks on Lula in the same proportion as those made on Bolsonaro earned Ciro criticism, including from allies. “The heat of a campaign and a personality like Ciro’s can sometimes provoke this type of reaction”, he temporizes.

“Lulismo sowed the mistaken view that, by doing this, Ciro would be running for Bolsonaro’s victory. This is wrong because we were potentially able to extract votes from one side and the other. And nobody was able to win in the first round” , he assesses, who accuses the PT of “silence the voice of Ciro” in order to have a monopoly on the left.

The marketer goes so far as to say that proposals already explored by the pedetista began to appear in a “very coincidentally similar” way in the PT campaign, such as the reformulation of Petrobras’ price policy and opposition to the independence of the Central Bank.

SORROWS WITH LULA AND DILMA AND TRAGEDY

Santana says that “I wanted to laugh” when he heard people say that the bellicose rhetoric against Lula resulted from the sum of the sorrows of both with Lula and the PT.

“Ciro may have grievances for him, but the political feeling was stronger than any personal grievances.

The Bahian man also says he does not understand his presence in the PDT campaign as a weak point, as he himself was convicted of Lava Jato, at the same time that Ciro pointed to corruption in Lula and in the PT.

“It was more embarrassing for me than for Ciro, because associating myself unfairly with corruption, which not even Ciro himself [Sergio] Moro did, it makes no sense.” The then judge, now a senator, condemned the couple for money laundering, but acquitted him of the charge of passive corruption.

Santana admits, however, his commitment “with a box two error, yes, like 99.9% of Brazilian marketers”, since “it was surrendering to this reality or changing profession.”

The journalist repeats that the Lava Jato offensive was part of “a choice of target” and that he and Mônica experienced “a tragedy”, but avoids going into depth in criticizing the operation.

“Lava Jato is a story that is not over yet, not in relation to me, but in everything — both for the alleged transgressors of the law and for those who used the law to transgress.”