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Game Changer

08/21/2014 - 08h43

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KENNETH MAXWELL

The tragic death of presidential candidate Eduardo Campos in a plane crash last week has profoundly upset the expectations about the outcome of the forthcoming presidential election in Brazil.

The Datafolha poll conducted between the14th and 15th August found that Marina Silva has 21% and Aecio Neves, so far the major challenger, 20%. Dilma Rousseff still received 36%, but her rejection rate was 34%, while Marina Silva's was only 11%.

In a simulation of the second round, Marina received 47%, with Dilma receiving 43%. [In both cases, there is a technical tie]. For the moment all bets are off. The outcome of the presidential contest is more uncertain than ever.

One thing is certain: Marina Silva will be formidable opponent to Dilma Rousseff. She is already a national figure and well known internationally. She has long been a champion of the environment, sustainable development, and social justice. She is an outspoken critic of the endemic corruption of Brazilian politics.

She was one of the 8 people chosen to carry the Olympic Flag at the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London. She has already run for presidency on the Green Party ticket in 2010 receiving 19.33% of the popular vote.

Much like Rousseff's patron, former president Lula da Silva, Marina needs no academic instruction on Brazilian poverty or disadvantage as she has lived with each and overcome both.

Born in Acre in 1958 she was one of 11 children of a rubber tapper. Of Portuguese and African-Brazilian heritage she was orphaned at 16, moved to Rio Branco, where she learnt to read and write.

She became a colleague of Chico Mendes, the legendry leader of the rubber tappers, joining him in demonstrations against the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest, which led to his assassination by ranchers in 1988.

A founder of Workers Party, Marina was elected a senator, and served as environmental minister under Lula, until she resigned after Lula in his second term appointed Harvard law professor Roberto Mangabeira Unger as minister of strategic affairs and gave him responsibility for Amazonian sustainability projects.

She was warmly supported during the mass demonstrations when on June 20, 2013, over a million and a half Brazilians took to the street throughout Brazil to protest against poor public services. She is a devout Pentecostal, a member of the burgeoning and political powerful evangelical movement in Brazil.

The business community, which wants anyone but President Dilma Rousseff, may well now have to learn to live with a more formidable and charismatic challenger. In fact in time even the dour Dilma may seem the lesser danger: No one can say that Brazilian politics does not produce surprises.

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