Reports: Brazil Power-Broker Silva Mulls Backing Neves
Environmentalist Marina Silva, who emerged as a key power-broker after Brazil's first-round election, is leaning toward endorsing business favorite Aecio Neves for president, though it could provoke a rift with her party, reports said Tuesday.
Silva's Socialist party will Wednesday unveil its strategy for the October 26 run-off after she finished third on Sunday behind leftist incumbent Dilma Rousseff of the Workers' Party (PT) and Neves of the Social Democracy Party (PSDB).
Advisors close to Silva indicated it was unlikely she would back Rousseff, with whom she had a tense relationship when they were both PT members serving under former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
- Desire for change -
"The election results reflect dissatisfaction with current conditions in Brazil, and a desire for change," Silva said Tuesday.
But she stressed her allies would make an independent decision on whom to back.
Silva wants Neves to meet some of her own pledges, including devoting 10 percent of GDP to education and creating a single five-year term for president rather than the current maximum of two consecutive four-year mandates.
PT chairman Rui Falcao responded, saying Rousseff was ready to modify her program to draw in support from Silva voters.
"If there were some changes that do not compromise our key pledges and proposals fundamental to our project then there is no problem," Falcao told journalists.
But Rousseff herself sounded more cautious.
"I think that no one can reject support from anyone," the president said at a news conference. "But I also know that nobody owns any voter."
Neves, however, released a statement echoing Silva's desire for a "new politics" and saying he favors "a five-year mandate for all public offices."
Neves accused Rousseff of having "lost credibility," with a stagnant economy and corruption allegations fingering government allies.
The Globo newspaper earlier quoted Joao Paulo Capobianco, a close Silva aide, as saying Neves and his Social Democracy Party had to "signal" how far it would go to meet Silva backers.
But Capobianco added: "The assessment is that we cannot have another four years of this government."
Silva, who grew up poor and illiterate in the Amazon before rising to become a respected conservation activist, senator and environment minister, was an early pace-setter in the campaign but later fell behind, winning just 21 percent of the vote, to 42 for Rousseff and 34 for Neves.
- Socialist leaders divided -
Earlier, Globo reported senior figures in the Socialist Party (PSB), whose ticket Silva took in August on the death in an air crash of former running mate Eduardo Campos, are divided ahead of Wednesday's strategy meeting.
Silva's running mate Beto Albuquerque and secretary general Carlos Siqueira are leaning towards Neves, while the PSB's president Roberto Amaral and three Socialist state governors prefer Rousseff, it said.
If the party, which left the ruling coalition last year to prepare a challenge to Rousseff, remains neutral, analysts say that would likely favor an incumbent whose leftist stance more closely aligns with the views of the PSB base.
Rousseff said Monday she believed Silva's voters would not all follow the party's eventual lead on who to back but would split their support.
Opinion polls suggest some 60 percent will go for Neves, grandson of a former president and ex-governor of Minas Gerais state.
"I am going to vote for Aecio, because he is offering a change in government. An improvement," professor Elias Caires, 42, said.
And when voters' speak of change, most often what they mean is that they are frustrated by the economic slowdown under Rousseff.
Brazil, Latin America's biggest economy and the world's seventh-largest, entered recession in the first half of the year, a painful reversal of the rapid growth it posted in the 2000s.
Source: Agence France Presse
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