Os eleições

The Brazilian federal, state and local elections are coming up later this year, and it seems that the campaign runs for months.  On TV the campaign ad's come on in blocks - the workers party followed by the communist party, then the party for the mobilisation of Brazil (??), and so forth - talking heads giving 30 second sprays - like speed dating with aspiring politicians. 

So far there have been about 20 blokes and one woman - no make that two women - and I guess that reflects the gender ratio in parliament here.  Worse, but not enormously so, than Australia in terms of gender equality.  Most interesting though is that these ad's for ordinary parliamentary candidates run for free on commercial TV, by decree of federal law.  The standard of the production values varies a bit, but the time slots are identical per candidate.  Ad's for presidential and governor candidates are additional, and paid for.  Maybe that's the only way that you're going to get a communist party ad in prime time amongst the more vanilla offerings.  Maybe there's a lesson here that the Australian electoral system could learn ...