José Serra, Fernando Henrique Cardoso's successor, actually lost the ellections not because of IMF policies was in place. Cardoso's party (PSDB) showed clear disregard for social problems - a considerable part of the population was so poor that they could barely buy any food, they didn't care about IMF, they had other basic needs. Luiz Inácio da Silva, on the other hand, was clearly a candidate of the people, he'd go to great lenghts to assure people that his duty was to put food on the table of those very poor people, while not screwing up middle class brazilians. So, it's not right to blame PSDB's failure on ellections on the IMF policies, it was they ignorance of the more urgent people's needs (not to talk about they selling huge state enterprises priced like bananas, corruption scandals, etc. that got people really tired of PSDB rulling the country).