Paulo Maluf - Unsuccessful Contender For The Presidency

Unsuccessful Contender For The Presidency

In 1972, following his mayorship, he served as secretary of transport of the state of São Paulo. He would then dispute a convention of the dictatorship's ruling party, ARENA – which was supposed to be a rubber-stamping caucus aimed at choosing as official "candidate" to the state government the former governor Laudo Natel. Maluf, however, succeed in being appointed official candidate for the following indirect elections by the State Legislative – something he did by means of abundant personal (and generous) promises to the convention's members – being afterwards elected governor for the state of São Paulo in 1978.

During his ensuing term (1979–1983), Maluf used his position for advertising his prospective candidacy to the Presidency in the forthcoming 1985 indirect elections, by means mostly of schemes such as donation of ambulances to impoverished municipalities in Northeastern Brazil, as well as decorating influential people with the State's chief decoration – having them flown to São Paulo free of charge and lodged in luxury hotels before the official decoration ceremony. He also spent wildly in public works, including in some schemes of doubtful validity, such as in an eventually failed plan to move the state's capital city. It was because of such schemes that one of the most notable accusations of corruption against him emerged, concerning the oil company Paulipetro. This was a state company founded by Maluf during his tenure as governor with the purpose of digging the state for oil and which consumed around US$500 million whilst drilling 21 holes and finding nothing but a few pockets of natural gas and water.By then, Maluf had already fostered a reputation "for engaging in corrupt machine politics".

In 1982, he was elected federal deputy with a then national record 672 629 votes and came to stand as the military's preferred presidential candidate for the 1985 presidential elections- the last to be held by means of an Electoral College – where he stood a good chance of winning. His overweening strategy, however, stranged him from most of the party bosses – the civilian caucus which had provided political support to the military dictatorship in the last twenty years. That caused his PDS party (as the current PP was known at the time) to splinter into the PFL, a move that made good the mutual alienation between the ruling military scheme and its civilian base, something which resulted in the election of oppositional candidate Tancredo Neves.