são paulo

Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso last week replaced the science minister, Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira, in a ministerial reshuffle. The job went to diplomat Ronald Sardenberg, a personal friend of the president, and previously secretary for special projects and secretary for strategic affairs.

Bresser Pereira, an economist, had been science minister for the first six months of Cardoso's second term, having replaced José Israel Vargas, who held the post for a record six years. Bresser Pereira was known among scientists for a certain impetuosity and for making controversial statements. He aroused considerable animosity among researchers in northeast Brazil with comments about the quality of the science done there.

Whether or not the minister's style played a part in his replacement, the reshuffle was intended primarily to redistribute favours among the political parties that support Cardoso. For a while the science ministry was expected to go to a member of one of these parties, but Cardoso eventually decided to appoint someone whom the scientific community could be comfortable with.

Cardoso has said that he considers the ministry's role to be “strategic”. “We'll see what happens when the budget for 2000 appears,” comments the new president of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science, biochemist Glaci Zancan, from the Federal University of Paran´.