Dante de Oliveira

Dante Martins de Oliveira (6 February 1952 – 6 July 2006) was a Brazilian politician who was the governor of Mato Grosso state and the mayor of Mato Grosso's capital, Cuiabá, for three terms. He was also a federal deputy who became the Minister of Agrarian Development under president José Sarney from 1986 to 1987. He is well known for his work with the Diretas Já movement, which fought for the direct election of presidents in Brazil. As a federal deputy, he became most well known for proposing a constitutional amendment that would have mandated for direct presidential elections, the Dante de Oliveira Amendment.

Biography Oliveira was born on 6 February 1952 in Cuiabá, the son of Sebastião de Oliveira and Maria Benedita Martins de Oliveira.

He attended the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), graduating in 1970 with a degree in civil engineering. While at UFRJ, he became involved with the 8th October Revolutionary Movement at a time when the movement had the option to participate politically during the military dictatorship through the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB).

Upon returning to his hometown of Cuiabá, Oliveira ran for his first political office as councilman for the city but lost. He eventually was elected a state deputy to the state legislature of Mato Grosso in 1978. As the two-party system in the military dictatorship ended and the redemocratization process began, Oliveira officially affiliated himself with the newly renamed PMDB, being elected as a federal deputy in 1982.

Diretas Já

Although the idea for creating a constitutional amendment to reestablish direct presidential elections cannot be credited to Oliveira entirely, his proposed amendment and its subsequent failure in the National Congress had massive repercussions, as the movement for direct democracy in Brazil grew beyond the Congress, and became a popular movement in Brazil known as Diretas Já.

Fearful of what was occurring in Congress, then leader of the military dictatorship João Figueiredo strongly pressured members of the dictatorship-aligned PDS to vote down the measure. Along with, Oliveira received a note from Tancredo Neves that affirmed that Oliveira's amendment was all but likely to be voted down. Despite this, the central faction of the movement began to take to the streets, with an IBOPE poll taken on the eve of the eventual vote showing that 84% of those questioned approved of the amendment. As a last minute effort to stave off the movement, the federal government put forward their own amendment, dubbed the "Figueiredo amendment" which, among other things, would have prevented the reestablishment of direct elections until 1988.

Post-dictatorship political career In 1985, Oliveira was elected to be the mayor of Cuiabá for the PMDB. He only served several months out of his first term before being tapped by then-president José Sarney in 1986 to be the Minister of Agrarian Development. His vice-mayor, , succeeded him. He returned to his post as mayor in 1987 and attempted to resolve the city's financial shortcomings. He left the position to run for senator for Mato Grosso in 2002, but was not elected.

Death While tentatively planning to run once more as a federal deputy, Oliveira died on 6 July 2006 in Cuiabá due to pneumonia that was exacerbated by complications from diabetes. He is buried in Piedade Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in Cuiabá, within the Historic Center of Cuiabá.