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BBC MUNDO RADIO
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Until last week, Dilma Rousseff, the candidate hand-picked by Brazil’s president to succeed him, appeared to be cruising to an easy first-round victory in an election next month that would make her the first woman to become president in the country’s history.
Mauricio Lima/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, right, and Dilma Rousseff, whom he has chosen to succeed him, in Campinas on Saturday.
Roberto Jayme/Reuters
Mr. da Silva in August with Erenice Guerra, his chief of staff, who was forced to resign last week amid an ethics scandal.
Riding the coattails of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who will probably go down as his country’s most popular president, Ms. Rousseff extended her lead in the polls enough that she seemed poised to capture a majority of votes in the Oct. 3 election and avoid a second round.
But then a political scandal involving Mr. da Silva’s chief of staff — who succeeded Ms. Rousseff in the post in April so that she could campaign — exploded onto the headlines here, suddenly threatening to push the election to a runoff and sully the da Silva government’s reputation.
Erenice Guerra, the former right-hand woman of Ms. Rousseff, resigned Thursday amid a flurry of local news reports accusing her of trafficking in influence under Mr. da Silva’s nose. Ms. Guerra, they contend, took part in a lobby run by her son that helped businesses gain access to contracts and state bank loans for public works projects in exchange for money — some of which was reportedly intended to help finance political campaigns.
Ms. Guerra has denied the allegations and tried to blame the opposition for them, referring to Ms. Rousseff’s rival candidate, José Serra, as “unethical and already defeated.” In her resignation letter she wrote of a “sordid campaign to defame” her image, her work and her family, and said she needed “peace and time” to defend herself from the accusations. She declined to comment further in an interview request.
Mr. da Silva has weathered scandals before and emerged unscathed, but this is the second political crisis in a month involving his Workers’ Party. The other recent controversy, in which the tax records of Mr. Serra’s daughter and other members of his party were illegally released, seemed to resonate little with average voters, though it did appear to hurt Ms. Rousseff’s preference rating among voters in the highest income and education brackets, a very small portion of the electorate.
Poll numbers taken last week, before the more recent scandal started to gain its full momentum, showed that Ms. Rousseff had actually extended her lead over Mr. Serra, the former governor of São Paulo.
But analysts said the accusations of influence peddling had the potential to gain more traction with voters, and Mr. Serra is starting to pursue the issue vigorously, saying Ms. Rousseff was either a bad administrator for not knowing about it or had committed a crime if she did know.
“This may change the votes of well-educated, well-informed people,” said Paulo Sotero, director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and it has the potential to push the voting to a second round. But he said it was unlikely to affect the final outcome.
Alexandre Barros, managing director of Early Warning Consulting, a political consultancy in Brasília, said, “Most voters don’t understand what is going on with these scandals.” He speculated that by forcing out Ms. Guerra, Mr. da Silva “will divert bullets from the scandal itself and neutralize whatever ill effects it could have” for Ms. Rousseff.
This year’s election has been about continuity, and few Brazilians seem willing to risk upsetting the economic momentum that Mr. da Silva’s government has built over eight years.
Neither Ms. Rousseff nor Mr. Serra has come close to matching the charisma or political skills of Mr. da Silva, a former union leader with a fourth-grade education whose humble beginnings have resonated with many Brazilians. But Ms. Rousseff has had the popular president — and his accomplishments — in her corner. He brazenly hit the campaign trail with her, trumpeting her administrative skills, and saying he would probably take a role in the new government.
Mr. da Silva’s influence has been too much to overcome, political analysts said. Under his leadership, Brazil became the eighth largest economy in the world, enjoyed relatively low inflation, increased prosperity for all economic classes and became a bigger player on the international diplomatic stage.
“A very popular president with an 80 percent approval rating is very hard to campaign against,” said David Fleischer, a political science professor at University of Brasília. Mr. da Silva “totally engaged himself in Dilma’s campaign and was able to transfer his approval rating, votes and charisma.”
Mauricio Lima/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
José Serra, Ms. Rousseff’s rival in the presidential race, is trying to use the scandal to chip away at her lead in the polls.
Mr. Serra, an experienced politician and a popular former governor, has run an ineffectual campaign in which he has tried to show he is a better continuation candidate than Ms. Rousseff, who had never before run for political office, analysts said.
“He thought his experience would compensate for Lula’s popularity,” Mr. Sotero said. “But he did not explain to the Brazilian people what he is for.”
Mr. Serra created confusion, analysts said, when he included images of him side by side with Mr. da Silva in campaign television spots, as if to identify himself with the president. But days later, he began to sharply criticize the government.
He also alienated former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, fearing that Mr. Cardoso was too unpopular with the masses, even though he set the stage for Brazil’s recent economic success and has been a unifying opposition force.
Still, the latest allegations against Ms. Guerra raise serious questions about the da Silva government, analysts said. Two of Mr. da Silva’s three chiefs of staff have resigned in disgrace. A 2005 vote-buying scandal led José Dirceu to step down, damaging the reputation of the Workers’ Party, which Mr. da Silva helped found.
No direct link has been made between Ms. Rousseff and any possible influence peddling. But Mr. da Silva’s government is not taking any chances. The president has remained in Brazil rather than fly to New York where he had been scheduled to give a speech on Thursday at the United Nations.
Mr. da Silva also reacted quickly to try to contain the growing scandal, asking for Ms. Guerra’s resignation five days after the allegations surfaced; he waited 10 days to ask for Mr. Dirceu’s resignation in 2005.
Ms. Rousseff, while on a campaign stop on Saturday, told reporters that she had known nothing about a supposed lobbying arrangement. “I was never made aware of that,” she said.
But various investigations, which are barely under way, are unlikely to produce any results until after the first round of voting. Anything short of direct evidence showing that Ms. Rousseff was involved in malfeasance is unlikely to upend her chances in the first round now, analysts said.
“Brazil is living a great moment,” said Mr. Sotero, the Brazil Institute’s director. “Brazilians are happy where they are, and they want more.”
Like Americans, “they are very practical people,” and in the end, he said, “they vote their pockets.”
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