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Talk turns to a Lula comeback as Brazil’s president tumbles in polls
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| Contributor | IndyGeorgia |
| Last Edited | IndyGeorgia Aug 25, 2013 02:12pm |
| Category | Speculative |
| News Date | Aug 19, 2013 02:00pm |
| Description | BRASILIA — Living in a military dictatorship, a young Dilma Rousseff, seething against the inequities of Brazilian society and the authoritarian government, joined a Marxist guerrilla group with one central objective: to topple the state.
Forty years later, it’s President Rousseff who is being tested by rage: daily protests across dozens of cities in June, followed by simmering discontent.
The anger over corruption and substandard services is directed at the entire political class, leading to sometimes-violent demonstrations against the governor in Rio de Janeiro and outbursts against politicians in other corners of the country. But on a national level, it is Rousseff, 65, who has been most battered by the unrest that her center-left government failed to see coming.
That has led to divisions in her broad governing coalition and an intense debate within her Workers’ Party, with some members floating the idea of a comeback by Rousseff’s larger-than-life immediate predecessor, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, according to party members and political analysts interviewed here in Brazil’s capital.
Jorge Bittar, a member of congress from the Workers’ Party, said that Rousseff’s outreach efforts since June have strengthened her position and that she will probably run for a second term next year. But nothing is preordained, he said, particularly if the economy declines and protests pick up again. |
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