Fernando Henrique Cardoso

Fernando Henrique Cardoso, often called FHC, was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1931 and became a sociologist at the University of São Paulo. After the 1964 coup he went into exile in Chile, where he wrote, with Enzo Faletto, an influential study of dependency and development in Latin America. Back in Brazil he was forced into retirement from his university post, joined the opposition MDB and became a senator for São Paulo. In 1988 he helped found the PSDB. As Itamar Franco's finance minister he led the team behind the Real Plan, which carried him to the presidency in 1994. He was reelected in 1998 after Congress allowed one consecutive reelection. He is now a former president with no elected office, an honorary president of the PSDB and president of an institute bearing his name.

Supporters credit Cardoso with consolidating the Real Plan, ending decades of high inflation, modernizing public finances and expanding telephone access through privatization, and they see his peaceful handover to Lula in 2003 as a landmark of democratic maturity. Critics on the left accuse him of selling state assets cheaply, raising public debt through high interest rates and leaving unemployment high, and they describe his economic policy as neoliberal. The 1997 reelection amendment was clouded by press reports that some deputies had been paid for their votes, which he denied any involvement in. A sharp currency devaluation in January 1999, weeks after his reelection, damaged his popularity. In retirement he has written widely on democracy and drug policy reform.