José Serra
José Serra ( born March 19, 1942 in São Paulo, SP) is a Brazilian politician.
Life and career
Serra was born the son of an Italian immigrant from Corigliano Calabro (Calabria ) in Mooca ( sub-prefecture Mooca the city of São Paulo). His political career began during his civil engineering degree at the University of São Paulo. In 1962 he co-founded the Social Movement Ação Popular, 1963 President of the União Nacional de Estudantes ( Association of Brazilian student bodies ). During the military dictatorship in Brazil, he spent a long time after 1964 years in exile in France and in Chile, where he was temporarily Advisor to the President Salvador Allende. After returning to Brazil to democracy, he was elected deputy for the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement ( PMDB ) 1986. In 1990 he was again elected to the Chamber of Deputies, but this time for the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira ( PSDB ), which he founded in 1988.
Serra was elected in 1994 to the Senate of the State of São Paulo for the PSDB, and from 1995 to 1996, he served as planning minister under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. From 1998 to 2002 he was Minister of Health. In 2002, he ran for his party for the presidency in the wake of his party colleague Cardoso, who was not allowed to compete again after two terms. He reached the ballot, was defeated there, but clearly with 38.7 to 61.3 percent against Lula da Silva.
In 2004 he was elected mayor of São Paulo. On 31 March 2006, he resigned and ran for the office of the Governor of São Paulo. The first ballot on 1 October 2006 Serra won an absolute majority and was elected governor. In the gubernatorial election in 2010, he joined because of his presidential candidacy not again. His successor Geraldo Alckmin was chosen.
For the 2010 presidential election, he joined again for the PSDB. A year before the election, he led significantly in the polls in June and July 2010, he was still on par with its most promising counterpart candidate Dilma Rousseff of the Partido dos Trabalhadores. Then he fell back significantly. In the first round of voting on October 3, 2010, he finally reached 32.6 percent and moved into the runoff election against Dilma Rousseff. In this he was subject to clear with about 44 percent of the valid votes.