Skip to main content

Brazilian President and presidential candidate for the Workers Party, Dilma Rousseff waves after delivering a speech.EVARISTO SAEVARISTO

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff faces a fierce fight to hold on to her job over the next three weeks, with early signs that her rival in a second-round vote is rallying a wide "anyone-but-Dilma" caravan of supporters.

After a volatile campaign, Ms. Rousseff of the Workers' Party finished first, with 41 per cent of the vote in Sunday's vote. But she lacked the votes to clinch the election in one round. In the Oct. 26 runoff vote, she will face Aecio Neves of the centre-right Brazilian Social Democratic Party, who won 34 per cent of the vote.

The surprise result was the distant third-place finish of Marina Silva, an outsider environmentalist who represented dramatic change. Ms. Silva had at one point led the polls, but fell victim to a hard-hitting media campaign by her opponents, who questioned her experience and ability to govern. She finished with 21 per cent of the vote.

Ms. Rousseff's lead is not insubstantial, and she has a lock on the poor and new middle-class voters who do not trust Mr. Neves's party.

But overnight there were indications that Ms. Silva, and many of the key people around here, intend to throw their support behind Mr. Neves, in a united effort to end the 12 years of rule by the Workers' Party.

"I made a commitment to change," Ms. Silva said in her concession speech in Sao Paulo on Sunday night.

The reason she joined up with the Brazilian Socialist Party (initially as a vice-presidential candidate, only to be thrust into the main role when the presidential candidate, Eduardo Campos, died in a plane crash in August) was her frustration with government, she said. She suggested that this had not changed, and so she might once again ally herself with another party.

In fact, Ms. Silva was a member of the Workers' Party (known by its Portuguese acronym PT) for decades, and served as environment minister in a previous PT government. But there is a deep rift between her and Ms. Rousseff. The two clashed bitterly when they were both in cabinet a decade ago, over industrial development in the Amazon rainforest, and the fight contributed to Ms. Silva's resignation from government.

Now, Ms. Silva feels that she was treated unfairly by the Rousseff campaign during the election. "In the conversations [she had with allies], Marina repeated she was disrespected by the PT and there was no chance of her discussing support for Dilma Rousseff," columnist Bernardo de Mello Franco reported in the national newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo on Monday morning. " 'There is no way,' she said."

He predicts Ms. Silva will move swiftly to back Mr. Neves. "She will probably say people voted for change when she justifies her choice to support [Mr. Neves]," he wrote. "She will demand the inclusion of some of her ideas in his platform."

A group of promiment public intellectuals who had backed Ms. Silva published an open letter on Monday morning also endorsing Mr. Neves for the second-round vote.

"We support Aecio Neves because economical stability and growth are essential conditions to make the reduction of inequality effective, and to ensure we resume to developing in a sustainable way," the letter said.

Mr. Neves, who is an economist and a former governor of the industrial state of Minas Gerais, has had the enthusiastic backing of Brazil's business community in the election so far. He has pledged to reduce inflation, open the economy to competition and cut the deficit through reduced government spending.

Ms. Silva's campaign was hurt by the lack of a traditional party structure to back her, while Ms. Rousseff and Mr. Neves front Brazil's two traditional ruling parties. Ms. Silva was also the target of harsh attack ads aired by the Workers' Party, which painted her as incapable of governing, and said (inaccurately) that she intended to cancel the social welfare programs that have lifted millions of people out of poverty during the past decade.

Brazilians were also voting for members of Congress, state governors and some senate seats on Sunday. In Congress, the two parties that are the core of Ms. Rousseff's governing coalition once again finished with the largest number of seats. But her Workers' Party lost 20 per cent of its Congress seats, and its closest ally lost seven per cent; they held steady in the Senate. Nevertheless, it will be much easier for Ms. Rousseff to form a government, should she win the runoff, than it will for Mr. Neves.

Interact with The Globe