BRAZIL: Football Idol Pele is Big Surprise in Cardoso's Cabinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Dic 21 (IPS) - The naming of all-time football hero Edson Arantes do NascimentoPeleas special sports secretary was the big surprise in President-elect Fernando Henrique Cardoso's future cabinet, announced on Wednesday.
The names of the majority of those appointed by Cardoso, who will enter office on Jan. 1, had already been known since several days ago.
Another surprise was the designation of former finance minister Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira as secretary of federal administration, when he was expected to be given the post of foreign minister.
Pele was the last future official to be announced, with the President-elect calling him "a symbol of the Brazil that emerged from the bottom and became successful."
"This is the best team I could possibly have gotten together. In choosing it I did not think in regional terms, but only about Brazil," Cardoso said.
The President-elect stressed continuity in naming his economic team, which will be headed by new finance minister Pedro Malan, currently Central Bank president.
Malan will be accompanied by other members of the current government, such as Persio Arida and Gustavo Franco from the Central Bank, Roberto Mendonca de Barros, currently secretary of economic policy, and Edmar Bacha, presently with the National Economic and Social Development Bank.
The economist Dorothea Werneck was named minister of industry and commerce, and the education ministry was given to Paulo Renato de Souza, who coordinated Cardoso's government programme and will now be in charge of "carrying out the necessary enormous changes, above all in grassroots education," Cardoso said.
Roberto Muylaert was named national secretary of social communication, and given the mission of planning a major initiative in educational television, an area in which he specialises.
The ministry of culture will be occupied by sociologist Francisco Weffort, who abandoned the Workers Party to accept the offer from his friend and former professor Cardoso.
The two current ministers who will keep their posts are minister of science and technology Jose Israel Vargas and health minister Adib Jatene, who has held the position since the administration of former President Fernando Collor de Mello.
Deputy and former finance minister Pernambuco Gustavo Krause was named to the ministry on environment and water resources, a post Cardoso sees as particularly significant because "nothing is more important than water."
Ambassador Ronaldo Sardenberg will be secretary of strategic affairs, an office which replaces the intelligence service.
Cardoso will eliminate the ministries of social welfare and regional integration (replaced by the assistant secretaryship to the Presidency), as they were in charge of distributing substantial resources and were seen as focal points of political favouritism.
© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service