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Amanpour

Brazil's Election Battle; A Vanishing World Caught on Camera; U.S.- Afghan Security Deal; Imagine a World

Aired October 01, 2014 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight: the incredible rags to riches story of the Brazilian presidential candidate Marina Silva. What

are her chances as she gives up for the country's final TV election debate.

MARINA SILVA, BRAZILIAN ENVIRONMENTALIST AND POLITICIAN (through translator): I was illiterate until I was 16, suffered five times from

malaria, three times from hepatitis, also metal poisoning. If I were the result of the past, I wouldn't be here today.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Also ahead, Kabul is rocked by another suicide bomb. Their answer to the country's new security deal with the United

States? I'll ask Washington's special envoy whether Afghanistan can avoid Iraq's fate.

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AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

Brazil: South America's economic powerhouse, host of this year's World Cup and the next Olympic Games is in the final days of a dizzying and dramatic

presidential campaign. A volatile faceoff between the first woman president, Dilma Rousseff, and her challenger, Marina Silva, who portrays

herself as David against the incumbent Goliath.

She's an environment activist with an extraordinary personal story of her own. She's the accidental candidate, who shot to within a hair's breadth

of the presidency after her running mate and Socialist Party leader, Eduardo Campos, was killed in a plane crash this summer.

But in the past few days, Dilma Rousseff has fought her way back to the top of the polls again. And this summer she told me why she deserved to be

reelected.

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DILMA ROUSSEFF, PRESIDENT OF BRAZIL (through translator): The real Brazil is a country that between 2003 to date has uplifted 36 million people out

of poverty. We have also mainstreamed into the middle class no less than 42 million people -- 42 million people. Just to give you the proper scale

that we're talking about, it is the equivalent of Argentina, a neighboring country, and a very populous one, by the way.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Still, Marina Silva is counting on riding a wave of voter fatigue and anger at corruption and the rising price of basic

services. I spoke with her on the eve of Brazil's final presidential debate -- her last best chance to slow Rousseff's juggernaut before this

weekend's election.

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AMANPOUR: Marina Silva, welcome to the program.

SILVA (through translator): Thank you.

AMANPOUR: Ms. Silva, you were doing very, very well in the polls and some suggested you might even win a second round. Now President Rousseff is

catching up.

What do you account for that?

How do you account for that?

SILVA (through translator): We began the campaign after the tragic accident we had when we lost our candidate, who was to present our program.

We presented proposals in order to solve the more serious problems of Brazil in relation to health, education, public safety and also for issues

related to infrastructure and the serious economic crisis we are going through; with not a lot of growth, inflation is going up.

We had a debate and the Brazilian population understands the need to have a candidate who has a program.

This is an attempt to reconstruct our program. The two parties have been fighting for 20 years to gain power and right now it's too early to say who

is ahead, because the Brazilian citizens are going to confirm their votes and intentions on the 5th of October when they go to the polls.

AMANPOUR: Now obviously Brazilian growth is quite slow right now. It dipped into recession, they say, earlier this year.

But employment is still high -- or unemployment is low in your country. And many say that is what's going to propel a victory by Ms. Rousseff.

SILVA (through translator): The Brazilian society is aware that it is necessary to change politics. But there's political stagnation today in

Brazil. And to propose leadership that is credible so that Brazil can invest strategically, so that investors can be interested in Brazil again,

this is what is going to define the elections.

AMANPOUR: Some people were very surprised to see the Brazilian stock market sink when news came out that President Rousseff was charging ahead

and the stock market rose when you were doing better in the polls.

SILVA (through translator): What is happening in relation to Dilma's presidency, there are a number of errors which have been made over the past

four years of her government.

They have created a situation of insecurity for investment. This has been affecting employment and inflation. There is also uncertainty in relation

to the government's attitudes related to the main companies as Petrobras, which today is involved in a scandal unfortunately.

Such an important company, which used to be widely respected at home and abroad, now is involved in a scandal.

AMANPOUR: Let me ask you about some of your social policies. You are an evangelical Protestant and the question on some of these social issues like

gay marriage, for instance, where do you stand on that?

SILVA (through translator): Our legislation guarantees the union of our same-sex people; our program has better integrated all the proposals.

There was a comparison made between our program and Dilma's program and we have seen that we guarantee the rights of this adoption as long as the

criteria set are met so both gay couples can get married as heterosexual people can.

We guarantee the rights for gay couples also in relation to inheritance, also to participate in public contests, and to be able to purchase real

estate. We are trying to guarantee all the rights for the gay couples in the same way that we do for heterosexual couples.

This has never been done before by our adversary. There has been a lot of bias in the past. I have my faith in Christianity. They don't have it.

I am religious, but they have been using lies to damage me. We defend states where all people have the same rights. This regarding of the color,

their social standing or their sexual orientation.

AMANPOUR: Tell me about your life and what you had to do to get an education, and what brought you to this particular place as a viable

candidate for president?

SILVA (through translator): I had a difficult life for someone who was born in the middle of the rain forest. I lost, when I was 14, my mother

and I had to help to look after seven brothers and sisters.

But I always say that education turned my life into a miracle. I have to deal with a lot of prejudice; I had to fight and continue fighting because

it is so easy to use any opinion in order to discredit any person of my origin. They are trying to discredit me now, my campaign, my work, my

public work.

Today I have paid a big price. People who have the same background, they have to show again and again that they're intelligent, that they are

competent and that they are capable of leading or managing a company and having a leadership role.

And obviously for the president of the republic, the demand is much higher. But I'm so proud. I like to defend my country and I don't want the

children of my country to go through what I have gone through and through what a lot of Brazilians have to go through today.

About 18 percent of our population from 14 to 23, they're illiterate. I was illiterate until I was 16, I suffered five times from malaria, three

times from hepatitis, also metal poisoning. I lived in slavery. If I were the result of what the past did to me, I wouldn't be here today.

But I've tried to do something good, productive and creative with my past and that's why I'm here, full of energy and experience, ready to move on to

the next stage.

AMANPOUR: Brazil and the United States had some very deep differences after Edward Snowden's revelations that Dilma Rousseff's phone was tapped.

Do you believe that a strong relationship with the United States is in Brazil's best interest?

SILVA (through translator): What was done by the United States, spying on our country, spying on our president, is unacceptable and we have to find a

way to overcome this. This means that the United States needs to acknowledge, recognize the mistake they have made, not just in relation to

Brazil but also in relation to so many other countries.

The mistake isn't to defend your own interests. The mistake is when someone imposes their own interests in an illegitimate manner. To spy on

another country is something illegitimate.

And we are totally against such actions. We understand that the United States plays an important role globally. And therefore Brazil and the

United States can stick together and work together culturally and economically.

AMANPOUR: Marina Silva, thank you very much for joining me.

SILVA (through translator): I would like to thank you, too. Thanks very much.

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AMANPOUR: And after a break, we'll look at another vital election. Afghanistan may have just thrown itself a lifeline. We'll explain when we

come back. But first, as Marina Silva just said, she was born in a rain forest, an environmental paradise, really, that's home to 40,000 species of

flowers and nearly half a million indigenous people.

Before they passed an astonishing exhibit by photographer Jimmy Nelson is currently on display here at London's Atlas Gallery, a fleeting glimpse of

the world's last surviving indigenous tribes, from South America to Siberia. Take a look as we take a break.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

Two terror attacks have hit the Afghan capital, Kabul, one day after the new government signed a long-awaited security deal with Washington and

NATO. Taliban answered that with a suicide bomb attack, one on a bus full of Afghan soldiers, killing seven of them.

So will the new and unprecedented unity government and that long-awaited deal to keep a residual force of some 12,000 foreign troops actually save

Afghanistan from going the way of Iraq? President Ashraf Ghani and his former rival turned chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah, were inaugurated

this week and my next guest was there, Daniel Feldman, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, joins me now from Washington.

Welcome to the program. Good to see you.

DANIEL FELDMAN, U.S. SPECIAL REP FOR AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN: Hey, it's good to see you as well.

AMANPOUR: So first question: will this security deal, will this unity government, do for Afghanistan what obviously failed in Iraq?

FELDMAN: Well, I think this is a very, very different circumstance from Iraq in a number of ways. First of all, the whole nature of this

government, in terms of prising and prioritizing unity and inclusiveness is a sharp distinction from Iraq and ensures that the will of the people of

Afghanistan will be heard and that they will try to execute benefits to support them.

Second of all, the nature of the security agreements just signed yesterday are obviously very different and put us in a very different posture vis-a-

vis Iraq.

And third, the fact that the international community continues to be as engaged as it is in Afghanistan, and in a variety of different ways, both

on the security side and most significantly on the civilian assistance side as we move forward and as Afghanistan stabilizes and we look forward to

renewing commitments made in the past at Tokyo and elsewhere to ensure that Afghanistan has a long-term stable and sustainable future.

AMANPOUR: Obviously Afghanistan has a lot of midwives still, as you just pointed out, a lot of people and countries trying to make sure that it

gets stood up. But this political dispute -- and we'll talk about the unity in a moment -- but the dispute that lasted so many months without a

government being in place allow the Taliban to take advantage of that vacuum. You saw what they've done today.

What is your fear about whether they're going to, you know, do the worst kind of damage that they would like to be able to do?

FELDMAN: Well, I think there's two facets to that.

First of all is the fact that the Afghan national security forces, the army and the police, have done very, very well over the course of the last 15

months since they've been in lead responsibility for security in the country. They've secured both the April and June elections, the

presidential and parliamentary elections. They've secured all the major population centers.

Yes, there has been an uptick in incidents during the course of this past years.

But that was to be expected and I think the NSF has done very well and now with the support of the ongoing support of the U.S. and the international

community, given the signing both of the NATO SOFA yesterday as well as our own bilateral security agreement, it ensures that we will be able to have a

security presence in the country, which the primary responsibility of which will be to continue to train, advise and assist the Afghan national

security forces over the next few years.

Second of all is the issue of a political resolution and political negotiation at some point with the Taliban, because we've always said that

this can't only have a military conclusion.

And so we will have to see there where the new government wishes to go and what's viable in terms of alternately bringing the Taliban back into the

fabric of Afghan society as long as for our purposes it meets the red lines which we've always stated in terms of them breaking with Al Qaeda, laying

down arms and, most notably, embracing the Afghan constitution, including its rights for women and others.

AMANPOUR: The new president did actually call for the Taliban to come to the negotiating table. But I want to pick up on what you talked about the

political imperative.

President Obama was interviewed this weekend on "60 Minutes;" he was talking about Iraq, primarily. But it could just as well have referred to

Afghanistan in terms of the need for political unity.

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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We can't do this for them. We cannot do this for them because it's not just a military problem; it is

a political problem. Unless there is a change in how not just Iraq but countries like Syria and some of the other countries in the region think

about what political accommodation means, think about what tolerance means.

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AMANPOUR: So he's laid it out clearly and we can see that struggle ongoing in Iraq, trying to get Sunnis and Shias to feel part of the same country.

You were in the negotiations, at least a lot of the time, with President Ghani now and Chief Executive Dr. Abdullah Abdullah.

Can you give me a sense of how they're going to work together and whether this is going to work?

FELDMAN: Yes. First of all, the work to hammer out a government of national unity was done overwhelmingly by the Afghans themselves. After

Secretary Kerry's second trip there in August, they formed a joint commission between the two campaigns with members from each meeting and

working through a whole variety of issues, including the role of the new chief executive officer, fundamental reforms that they'll pursue, like

electoral reform most notably, and a range of other issues.

And so they were 90 percent of the way through that when they became stuck on a few key issues. And that's where we helped play a small role in

mediating and continuing to move this forward to help facilitate the work that they had already done.

And it was -- it was quite notable because in my several weeks in Kabul, it was very clear from the very outset that they shared a conceptual vision of

what was right for Afghanistan, that they both ran overwhelmingly on reform agendas, that they were both committed to broad inclusivity, that they both

want to tackle corruption and other key issues that pose such challenges to Afghanistan and that they were both committed to a truly unified and

representative government.

And given that conceptual vision, it became then a matter of just hammering out the words that best reflected that.

And that's what I'm very glad that they were able to do and truly, this has been a very historic and momentous last week for Afghanistan, from the fact

that they came to agreement on this political agreement a week ago, signed it, had this inauguration, which you could see from all the optics and

pictures was a very inclusive moment in terms of both of them speaking, both of them talking about common agendas and the way they want to bring

all Afghans into this.

And in what's happened just in the last few days, since the inauguration, including the signing of these two security agreements yesterday, where

they stood next to each other, Dr. Abdullah and President Ghani, behind the signers, with a broad array of their ministers and other leaders, to

demonstrate the support for moving Afghanistan forward and then the very first movements, the very first actions of this new government in terms of

delivering on its reform agenda, including tackling corruption.

AMANPOUR: Well, let me just talk about that. Let me talk about that because clearly, in his inauguration speech, President Ghani, according to

all the readouts and what we've seen, seemed to lay down a lot of gauntlets, basically telling all sorts of areas, whether it's

parliamentarians or cabinet members or others that things have to be done better and it can't be corrupt business as usual.

Is that really going to fly?

FELDMAN: It has to fly; and frankly, that's what the Afghan people are expected and demanding and what they deserve at this point. So there have

been enormous gains made in Afghanistan over the last 13 years in terms of education with 8 million kids now in school, 40 percent of them girls, with

life expectancy, in civil society, in the roles of women, in media freedoms.

But there's so much more to be done in terms of tackling corruption and putting this country on a more stable footing. And they both ran on an

agenda to rectify that and I think they're going to move very quickly together and with the blessing and expectations of the Afghan people to

deliver on those promises.

So I think it will have to fly and it's what the Afghans want at this point.

AMANPOUR: And Daniel Feldman, you obviously know very well; you were Richard Holbrook's deputy when he was first the president's special

representative to Afghanistan.

But these two men are, in fact, moderate pro-Western, rule of law, they believe in all the sorts of things that universally we all believe in.

But they have a lot of hardliners; they have a lot of supporters. President Ghani had a warlord by the name of Rashid Dostum in his campaign

and who was probably going to get a major seat in a new cabinet.

How is that going to work?

And are these people going to change their stripes?

FELDMAN: Well, it's -- these two men are remarkable leaders and there's not many elections that I look at around the world where you can look at

both of two candidates and say we would be comfortable with either one.

But it's truly the case where they both ran on very moderate, very reform and action oriented agendas and it's -- and that's why I think the

government of national unity works so well for them and for the Afghan people.

There's a -- they've had a history of working together, despite the fact that this has been a very tense period over the last few months in the

aftermath of the runoff elections. They served as finance minister and foreign minister together in the first years of the Karzai administration

and they do share this common vision and a moderate, rational approach to govern -- to what government can achieve and how to do it.

And so I think you will see a very robust and aggressive effort and moving forward on these anti-corruption and other reform agendas. And but it will

have to be done, obviously, within a framework that works for Afghanistan, given itself history, given its population. And we'll have to follow their

lead on how they prioritize the various policy reforms and how it runs up against raw politics.

AMANPOUR: And keeping the warlords at bay?

FELDMAN: We'll have to see how this is done. I mean, there's a range of ideas out there in terms of the appointments of government officials and

how to ensure that some things like appointments are made on merit-based rather than just patronage criteria. But there's many constituencies in

Afghanistan. It's obviously has not only ethnic but regional and political and a whole variety of other potential fissures.

And that's why the common commitment to unity and to have a unified Afghanistan is what's most critical about this going forward and that both

men truly share this and believe that this is what delivers best for the Afghan people.

AMANPOUR: On that note, a lot of hope out there. Special Representative Daniel Feldman, thank you very much indeed for joining me tonight.

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AMANPOUR: And while Afghanistan does remain a fragile work in progress as we've heard, across the world in Hong Kong, students are still flexing

their democratic muscle with massive civil disobedience. Some American schoolrooms are in revolt, too. Imagine not only reading history but

making it up. That's when we come back.

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, days of massive protest in Hong Kong show no signs of stopping as demonstrators celebrated China's National Day by

defying the rain and the Chinese authorities. Hong Kong's pro-democracy push began actually two years ago with a tiny band of teenagers, armed only

with yellow ribbons and a movement they called Scholarism.

It was led by a 15-year old named Joshua Wong, who's captured all the headlines recently. And the protest successfully opposed the imposition of

a pro-Communist school curriculum. That fight has exploded, of course, into a battle cry for political freedom for all of Hong Kong.

So now imagine a world where that very act of civil disobedience, the same weapon used by Gandhi, Dr. King and Mandela, to end generations of

opposition, is today a point of controversy in textbooks in the United States of America.

In the state of Colorado, students and teachers in one county are boycotting classes to protest changes in their history curriculum. They're

challenging a new school board directive that diminishes the importance of civil disobedience in the nation's story and promotes instead what it deems

to be a more patriotic agenda.

Who knew the two were mutually exclusive?

And that's it for our program tonight. Remember you can always contact us at our website, amanpour.com, and follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Thank

you for watching and goodbye from London.

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