MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Green candidate Marina Silva will run for president in Brazil
Marina Silva born into a rubber-tapping community in the Amazon rainforest, was minister under former President Lula and has run in two presidential elections Former Brazilian senator and environmental minister Marina Silva said on Sunday that she would seek her party’s nomination to run for president next year. Silva announced her plans at a meeting of her Sustainability Network Party, or REDE, which would officially nominate her at its national convention in April.
The 59-year-old environmentalist, born into a rubber-tapping community in the Amazon rainforest, was minister under former President Lula da Silva. She has run in the previous two presidential elections but never made it to a second-round vote.
Silva said she would seek her party’s nomination because “Brazilians want a country free of corruption” and that she had the ethical bearings to deliver on that. Supporters have praised her as Brazil’s most principled politician, which could play a large role in the next election.
Since early 2014, Brazilian prosecutors and police have carried out an unprecedented anti-corruption drive that has revealed political graft touching every major party, but not Silva‘s.
Silva has remained committed to fiscal responsibility, inflation targeting and a floating exchange rate, the so-called tripod of economic policies that gave Brazil stability after a period of rampant inflation and erratic growth in the 1990s.
In the latest election survey conducted by the respected Datafolha polling institute and published Saturday on the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper’s website, Silva ranked third, with 10% of respondents saying they would vote for her.
But that poll included Lula as a possible candidate. Lula was convicted in a corruption trial in July. If a higher court upholds that conviction before the October election, he could not run.
Without Lula, the Datafolha poll had Silva trailing right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro, a federal lawmaker who won 21% approval, compared with her 16%. Datafolha interviewed 2,765 voters across Brazil on Nov. 29-30. The poll had a two-percentage-point margin of error.
In the 2010 election, Silva, then with the Green Party, took a surprising 20% of the first-round vote, but it was not enough to push her into a runoff with eventual winner Dilma Rousseff.
In 2014, she ran for vice president on the Brazilian Socialist Party ticket headed by Eduardo Campos, who died when his campaign plane crashed just two months before the election. Silva took his spot and won 21% in the first round, again missing out on a runoff.
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Dec 04th, 2017 - 07:18 pm +1Just fyg....1st, datafolha is not the most reliable source for polls including Lula...2nd,
the opinions of most political analysts, considering the possibility that Lula runs, are close to unanimous in that he'd lose in the second round ; 3rd, Lula's appeal will most likely be rejected by the TRF-4, and his prison term might well be doubled, which will make him a 'ficha suja', and means, even if he is not jailed, that he cannot run ; 4th, Marina Silva, although I have no reason (yet) to doubt her honesty, sat on the fence in the 2nd round of the last election, which did not sit too well with voters who are not 'petistas'.....
@Lightning
Brazil needs someone who is not part of the current corrupt Congress, who is not a stupid populist and is prepared to attack the problems head on...in other words, someone who' ll put the country before themselves....and their Party...a tall order, but let's see what happens in the next 6 months. .
Why the criticism? Here is an interesting report that there is a new viable candidate.
Dec 04th, 2017 - 06:05 pm 0We already know about Temer.
We already know about Lula.
It's old news that a disgraced former President, being investigated and charged with criminal corruption and money laundering wants to run as a candidate to escape prosecution.
Who would want a President with that sort of character?
Why Gilmar - or maybe Cabral/Cunha/Maluf & Co - aren't the presidential candidates? They have such a VAST “experience” and can be even “better” presidents than Collor the Crook!
Dec 05th, 2017 - 10:05 am 0Commenting for this story is now closed.
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