Sérgio de Oliveira Cabral Santos Filho (born January 27, 1963) is a Brazilian politician and a journalist
He was elected governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro in the 2006 Brazilian general election and sworn into office on January 1, 2007. Cabral Filho was a representative in the Rio de Janeiro state legislature from 1991 to 2002 and its president from 1995 to 2002. In the 2002 general elections, he was elected senator for the state of Rio de Janeiro, a position he occupied from January 2003 until December 2006, when he resigned to run in the Rio de Janeiro gubernatorial elections, having been replaced in Brazilian Senate by .
He ran for mayor of Rio de Janeiro in 1996 on a PSDB Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) ticket, but his election as governor happened after he switched to the PMDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party). He and his running mate, Luiz Fernando de Sousa, won 68% of the valid votes (5,129,064 votes) in the second round of voting against the Popular Socialist Party (PPS) candidate Denise Frossard, who received only 32% of valid votes.
Cabral was selected to make formal apologies to 120 individuals, including Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's 36th president, for human rights abuses inflicted on them during the dictatorship that was in power in Brazil from 1964 to 1985.
On November 17, 2016, Cabral was arrested on charges of corruption. He has been sentenced to jail.
Tenure as governor
Cabral became governor at a time of uncertain economic prospects and serious security challenges in his state of Rio de Janeiro. During the election campaign for governor in 2006, he had praised the "zero tolerance" security model touted by New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and pledged to root out police corruption and improve services in Rio's favelas.
After visiting Colombia in 2007 to observe that country's success in the realm of public safety, Cabral secured additional funding for the police and tasked Public Security Secretary, José Mariano Beltrame with spearheading a plan to improve security. In 2008, the state and city governments launched a community policing program called Pacifying Police Units, or UPPs, in Rio. In contrast to previous police practices, UPPs created a sustained, long-term police presence in favelas, including the Cidade de Deus, Complexo do Alemão and Santa Marta. Their operations made use of Rio military police's BOPE units in fighting urban crime and also use their Police Pacification Units for extended policing. These methods led to decreased homicide rates in the favelas where UPPs were set up.
The magazine Brasil de Fato described him in 2007 as a political figure who " relentlessly justifies police violence in poor areas of the city. His latest statement was to claim that people living in the favelas are being paid by drug traffickers to complain about police raids."
In healthcare, Cabral launched a mobile health unit that travels around the state giving free tests to the public in local areas.
Cabral also streamlined management of the state's finances through tax adjustments and adoption of strict modern management techniques such as electronic bidding. These measures led Rio de Janeiro to become the first Brazilian state to be ranked as "investment grade", by the world's most important risk rating agency, Standard & Poor's. At the time, the agency announced that "the strong management that has prevailed in the State over the past three years" and the fact that the state was "backed by a strong and diverse economy with an estimated GDP per capita of around 25% above the average in Brazil" made it achieve a global rating of "BBB-" and a "brAAA" credit rating on national scale.
His first tenure as governor was also marked by achievements for the LGBT community, especially the creation of Rio Sem Homofobia (Rio Without Homophobia), a program that aims to combat homophobia in public policies in the state. Cabral was also the first governor of Rio de Janeiro to participate in an LGBT parade.
In transportation, Cabral renovated the fleet of SuperVia trains, which had only ten trains in 2007 with air conditioning. Today, all 100 trains have air conditioning. He was also the governor who built most kilometers of underground metro lines since the subway began operation in the 1970s.
Security improvements, economic growth and Rio winning the bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics helped to increase Cabral's popularity and led him to an easy re-election victory in the 2010 Rio de Janeiro gubernatorial election, with more than 66% of the vote. He was seen as a key ally to Presidents Lula and Dilma and was regarded as potential vice presidential candidate.