Ex-Guerrilla on Cusp of Power in Brazil

By PAULO PRADA

SÃO PAULO—Until recently, Dilma Rousseff was a little-known bureaucrat. Now, the 62-year-old economist is poised to add another title to a résumé that already includes left-wing guerrilla, political prisoner and cancer survivor: Brazil's first female president.

Opinion polls predict the former energy minister and candidate for the ruling Workers Party will win Brazil's presidency in a first-round victory on Sunday. A runoff is scheduled for a month if no candidate gets 50% of the vote. But either way, analysts predict, Ms. Rousseff will take office Jan. 1.
Brazil's Candidates


A win by Ms. Rousseff, who was once arrested on charges of subversion and later testified that she was tortured by Brazil's military dictatorship, would extend the legacy of Brazil's immensely popular left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The former union leader, who is unable to run again after two terms, handpicked Ms. Rousseff and presented her as the person best placed to continue Brazil's economic boom, one which has lifted 35 million people into the middle class.

Over the past two years, the twice-divorced mother of one received a make-over that included cosmetic surgery, contact lenses and a stylish hairdo more apt for a television-news anchor than a former revolutionary. Once lagging behind chief rivals like centrist former governor José Serra, Ms. Rousseff soared in popularity this year during a series of side-by-side rallies with Mr. da Silva, from Brazil's Amazon to its southern industrial hubs.

"We have come a long way," Ms. Rousseff said at a recent campaign speech to Brazilian businessmen—comments meant to refer to Brazil, but which could also apply to her own trajectory.

Ms. Rousseff's relatively sudden rise has provoked criticism that she is Mr. da Silva's creation and lacks the experience to steward Latin America's biggest economy, one with a noisy multiparty democracy and hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure in the works, from giant river dams to high-speed trains. Ms. Rousseff has never held or run for elected office, spending her career in supporting roles. Critics say she hasn't been sufficiently forthcoming with voters; she has given few interviews since taking a lead in the race, and has skipped several presidential debates.
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Questions about the integrity of some in Ms. Rousseff's inner circle have also grown in recent weeks after her former aide, Erenice Guerra, was forced to resign from the government in September when reports surfaced that family members she hired were soliciting bribes. Ms. Guerra, in a statement, denied any involvement, and Ms. Rousseff has said she had no knowledge of any wrongdoing. Ms. Rousseff herself was lambasted by journalists last year for having what turned out to be an embellished résumé.

Further troubling skeptics, Ms. Rousseff has shown little interest in backing the kinds of structural reforms that some say are necessary for Brazil to rise from an emerging market to a developed nation. Those reforms include lowering what a United Nations agency says is Latin America's highest tax burden, and reining in government spending that doubled in the da Silva years.

"It will be difficult to manage a big, diverse and growing economy and all the pressures that entails," says Thomas Trebat, an economist and head of the Center for Brazilian Studies at Columbia University. "You better have a game plan other than just intent to keep doing the same."

Unlike Mr. da Silva, a charismatic leader known for his ability to compromise with rivals on the right, Ms. Rousseff has historically been more of an intellectual leftist and less of a pragmatist. That's prompted some to question whether she will be as willing to negotiate with conservatives or fend off demands from those on the left. Still, as energy minister and Mr. da Silva's chief of staff, Ms. Rousseff often sided with business interests, famously clashing with a prominent environment minister to expedite licensing for infrastructure projects in ecologically sensitive areas.

In a recent televised interview, Ms. Rousseff said she believes "in the strength of private initiatives," but rejected the notion that "the state shouldn't be present to create the conditions for investment." In comments to O Globo, a Rio de Janeiro daily, she called "talk of a fiscal adjustment," or state cost-cutting, "backward."

Ms. Rousseff declined to comment for this story. Interviews with nearly two dozen former and current colleagues and friends paint a picture of a talented and sometimes ruthless technocrat who has also proven flexible and ambitious enough to rise through government.

Born to a schoolteacher mother and Bulgarian father who successfully bought and sold property, Ms. Rousseff was raised in an upper-middle-class neighborhood of Belo Horizonte, the capital of the southeastern state of Minas Gerais. A bookworm as a child, she began flirting with leftist ideologies around the time Brazilian generals in 1964 overthrew a democratically elected president and began a 21-year dictatorship.
The Making of a Presidential Front-Runner

Until she was tapped by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to succeed him, Dilma Rousseff was a guerrilla and economist—and hardly a household name.

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Dilma
Rousseff Campaign

Ms. Rousseff as a young girl with her family
Dilma
Dilma

1947 Born into an upper-middle-class family in Belo Horizonte in southeastern Brazil.


Associated Press

A tank in front of the War Ministry in Rio de Janeiro after the military took over.


1964 Brazil's military takes over. Regime lasts 21 years.
[Dilma] Reuters

Ms. Rousseff's police mugshot from 1970

1965-73 Ms. Rousseff joins Brazil's underground resistance and leads a faction that stages bank robberies and other heists. In 1970, she is arrested, tortured and sent to prison for three years.



1973-2002 Moves to the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, where she keeps a low profile as a left-wing party adviser and economist. In 1986, is appointed to run the municipal budget office of Porto Alegre, the state capital. After that, she is twice named the state energy secretary.
[Dilma] European Pressphoto Agency

2002-05 Mr. da Silva enlists Ms. Rousseff to advise his successful campaign for president. In 2003, he appoints her Brazil's energy minister.



2005-10 Named chief of staff for Mr. da Silva, overseeing key government initiatives, including infrastructure and energy programs. Mr. da Silva picks her to run as the ruling party candidate to succeed him.
[Dilma] Associated Press



By the late 1960s, she joined a loosely connected group of activists who staged bank robberies and other heists to finance a revolution. Ms. Rousseff never took part in the planning or execution of the heists, but earned respect among the group as a bright thinker, according to fellow guerrillas at the time.

"She was quick, and she could argue a point with reason and conviction," says Roberto Espinosa, an academic and former activist who became a leader of a consolidated faction of the groups, along with Ms. Rousseff. Her intelligence, combined with her intense appearance—close-cropped hair and thick glasses—"made her someone you didn't easily forget."

By her early 20s, Ms. Rousseff had been twice married, both men fellow activists. Like other guerrillas, she used a nom de guerre, Stella, according to Carlos Araújo, her second husband, who took the code-name Max.

In January 1970, Ms. Rousseff was arrested at a São Paulo bar when she showed up, armed with a handgun and carrying false identity cards, for a meeting with another activist, according to Luiz Maklouf, a Brazilian author who has written extensively about the guerrilla movement.

Ms. Rousseff was convicted of subversion and spent three years in prison. The prosecutor, in documents, dubbed her the "Joan of Arc" of the movement.

In a 2003 interview with Mr. Maklouf, a rare instance in which she detailed her imprisonment publicly, Ms. Rousseff said she was tortured extensively. Interrogators, she said, beat her with a paddle and jolted her with electric shocks until she was nearly unconscious. They also hung her from the so-called "parrot's perch," in which the victim, arms and legs bound behind a pole, is suspended for prolonged periods.

Ms. Rousseff said in hindsight that the movement "did a lot of dumb things," but she remained proud of "daring to want a better country."

Upon her release in late 1973, she moved to the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. There, she finished an economics degree and helped form a leftist party that would govern several Brazilian states after democracy was restored in 1985.

Mostly, Ms. Rousseff avoided the limelight. Happy to pore over arcane policy issues, she initially worked as an adviser to unions, party leaders and candidates. A daughter, Paula, was born in 1976.

Friends from the time recall her as a hard worker, and culturally curious, catching foreign films at an art-house cinema and trading novels and history books with an informal reading circle. On a trip to Europe, Ms. Rousseff would rise early to explore, returning to wake her friends and take them to places she had discovered, recalls Licia Peres, a sociologist and close friend.

Eventually, Ms. Rousseff's role as a party adviser earned her a succession of bureaucratic positions, starting with an appointment as a municipal budget secretary in Porto Alegre, the state's capital, in 1986, and state energy secretary in 1993.

A year later, learning of an affair, Ms. Rousseff packed her husband's bags, and the two later separated, according to Mr. Araújo and several of her friends.

By 2000, Brazil was beginning to face crippling power shortages, and Ms. Rousseff turned her attention to revamping the state's energy grid, working with private companies to loosen bottlenecks and develop wind power and other energy sources. When a blackout darkened much of Brazil in 2002, Rio Grande do Sul was one of the few states still lit.

That's what caught Mr. da Silva's attention as he campaigned for what would soon be his first term, according to current and former members of the government. He asked Ms. Rousseff for advice on energy policy ahead of the election and then named her energy minister when he took office in 2003.

Once there, she impressed Mr. da Silva with her drive. Some colleagues, however, said she sometimes cursed at underlings and could be rude to colleagues, often in front of Mr. da Silva.

For instance, Ildo Sauer, a prominent energy expert who formerly led natural-gas operations at Petróleo Brasileiro SA, the state-run energy giant known as Petrobras, recalls a 2005 meeting in Brasília among company executives, Ms. Rousseff, and the president. There to discuss an auction for power plants that would use Petrobras gas, Mr. Sauer and his colleagues rejected a price for the gas that Ms. Rousseff had suggested. She grew aggressive, he says, telling the president that their assertion that the gas was worth more "is a lie" and that "Petrobras is trying to mislead you."

"It was moral harassment," says Mr. Sauer, who also advised the administration on energy issues. Mr. Sauer was dismissed by Mr. da Silva two years later because of differences over policy, according to Mr. Sauer and people familiar with the president's decision. Ms. Rousseff's campaign declined to comment on the episode, saying it was a private meeting.

Ms. Rousseff's defenders agree that she can be stern, but say a demanding leader is welcome in the slow and stodgy culture of Brazilian government. "What's wrong with exacting performance in a culture where a lot of workers just coast?" asks Guilherme Cassel, Brazil's minister of agrarian development.

In mid-2005, when a corruption scandal brought down Mr. da Silva's chief of staff, the president named Ms. Rousseff to the post. She broadened the position into a super-ministry that oversaw some of the government's landmark projects. She continued to manage energy matters, taking the lead role in the restructuring of the country's oil sector after Petrobras reported massive new offshore oil fields.

When it became apparent that Ms. Rousseff was being groomed to succeed Mr. da Silva, journalists in Brazil began scrutinizing her past. A 2009 article in Piauí, a monthly magazine, reported that she had never earned a masters degree listed on her official résumé. Ms. Rousseff admitted there was "an error" on the document, but never disclosed how the mistake occurred.
Earlier


To soften Ms. Rousseff's image, Mr. da Silva and the ruling party over the past two years have sought to humanize her. Playing along, she swapped glasses for contact lenses, began wearing makeup more regularly and, according to friends and her doctor, got a face lift.

A triumph against a nascent lymphatic cancer last year helped cast her as a fighter just as she entered the political spotlight. In the days after her first grandson was born last month, she posted photos of him on her website and sometimes tweets about him, moves that some say show off her maternal side.

At a rally last month in Joinville, a city first settled by German immigrants, Ms. Rousseff stood next to Mr. da Silva and said her feminine side would be an asset in governing Brazil. She then took a page from the playbook of Mr. da Silva, who has long said he was driven to succeed as president to prove that a working-class Brazilian was capable of doing a job previously held by the wealthy elite.

"I have to show that a woman can do it, too," she said to the crowd. "I won't let you down either."

Write to Paulo Prada at paulo.prada@wsj.com

Very couragous lady. Talking to a Brazilian friend she has a lot of support and will win.
Of course Istraili prime minisisters including Rabin , imprisoned by the British have been gorillas.
S.

3 October 2010 Last updated at 21:23 ET
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Brazil election results give Dilma Rousseff clear lead
Dilma Rousseff votes in Porto Alegre Dilma Rousseff votes in Porto Alegre: "It's the good fight you've fought that gives you victory"

Near-complete results in Brazil put Dilma Rousseff of the governing Workers' Party well ahead in the country's presidential election.

But with 97.5% of ballots counted, Ms Rousseff is still 3.6% short of the 50% total which would give her an outright win.

She will now have contest a second round at the end of October against the second-placed candidate, Jose Serra.

Ms Rousseff is the favoured successor to President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, who has completed two terms.

Analysts say Ms Rousseff ran a careful campaign, benefiting from Mr Lula's widespread popularity and the country's booming economy.

She was a frontrunner for much of the campaign.

Centre-left candidate Jose Serra, of the Social Democratic Party, had pinned his hopes on getting enough votes to force a second round.

President Lula, who is constitutionally barred from standing for a third consecutive term, acknowledged that the poll could go to a run-off.

"The election has two rounds. I have never won an election in the first round. It will be 30 more days of fighting... and let's go to this fight," he said.

Mr Lula stressed, however, that Ms Rousseff, his former chief of staff, was in a strong position to win.

The latest polls published on Saturday suggested Ms Rousseff's attempt to win enough votes to avoid a run-off vote on 31 October would be extremely tight.
Continue reading the main story
Brazil Elections: 3 October

* Presidential first round (second round on 31 October if no candidate gets at least 50% +1 of valid votes)
* Governors of all 26 states and the federal district
* Representatives of state legislatures
* 513 federal deputies
* Two-thirds (54) of the 81 Senate seats



O Globo newspaper's prediction had Ms Rousseff winning 51% of the vote, with Mr Serra on 31%; the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper poll put Ms Rousseff on 50% and Mr Serra on 31%.

Polls have consistently suggested Ms Rousseff would win a second round by a wide margin, but analysts say her position would be strengthened if she could win outright on Sunday.

Brazil, one of the world's most populous democracies, is also choosing local and national representatives.
Slipping lead

Maria Silveira, a Rousseff voter in Mr Lula's constituency, Sao Bernardo do Campo, outside Sao Paulo, told the Associated Press news agency: "It only makes sense to vote for the candidate who I know will continue what he started."
Continue reading the main story
Brazil: Key Facts

* Economy: Set for some 7.5% growth this year
* Resources: Top exporter of sugar, poultry and beef; major producer of iron ore
* Environment: Amazon rainforest makes Brazil a key presence in climate talks
* International voice: Growing ties with Africa and Middle East; supporter of G20 role
* Sport: Hosts football World Cup in 2014 and Olympic Games in 2016

But AP quoted 22-year-old student Iracy Silva as saying: "I voted for Serra because he has much more experience than the other candidates."

Voting is compulsory in Brazil. Machines are used to log the votes.

Polls closed at 2200 GMT (1700 local time), with results coming quickly, thanks to Brazil's electronic voting system.

Ms Rousseff, of the ruling Workers' Party, saw her lead in the opinion polls slip in the final days of campaigning after corruption allegations surfaced involving a former aide.

But her campaign has been boosted by energetic support from Mr Lula.

"I'm convinced the majority of people want continuity from the government," Mr Lula told a rally on Friday.

"That's why I think Dilma will win."

Ms Rousseff, 62, served as Mr Lula's chief of staff from 2005 until this year, and is a career civil servant. Her tilt at the presidency is her first attempt at elected office.

During the 1960s and 1970s she was involved in the armed struggle against Brazil's military rulers, and was jailed for three years.

The 68-year-old Mr Serra is hugely experienced, having served as Sao Paulo mayor, Sao Paulo state governor and health minister under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso Mr Lula's predecessor. He lost the presidential election in a run-off to Mr Lula in 2002.

Two other candidates for the presidency are trailing far behind in the polls.

Marina Silva of the Green Party and Plinio de Arruda Sampaio of the Socialism and Freedom Party are not expected to trouble the frontrunners.

Have you voted in today's elections? Send us your comments and experiences using the form below.

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Brazil Leader’s Chosen Successor Wins Presidency

Neco Varella/EFE, via European Pressphoto Agency
Dilma Rousseff after voting on Sunday in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
By REUTERS
Published: October 31, 2010
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Filed at 6:36 p.m. ET

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Poised to Lead Brazil, Facing Unfinished Tasks (October 31, 2010)
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Former guerrilla leader Dilma Rousseff won Brazil's presidential election on Sunday after promising to stick to policies that have lifted millions from poverty and made Brazil one of the world's hottest economies.

Brazil's election authorities officially called the vote in Rousseff's favor after she amassed 55.7 percent of valid votes compared to 44.3 percent for opposition candidate Jose Serra, with 95 percent of votes tallied.

The result completed an unlikely journey for Rousseff that took her from jail and brutal torture by her military captors in the 1970s to become the first woman to lead Latin America's largest economy.

An economist and former energy minister who leans left but has become more pragmatic over time, Rousseff had never run for elected office. Yet she received decisive support from Brazil's wildly popular President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who plucked her from relative obscurity to succeed him.

"I think she will continue Lula's work," said Elizabete Gomes da Silva, a factory worker in Sao Paulo. "He governed for the people who needed him most -- the poorest."

During Lula's eight years in office, his stable fiscal policies and social programs helped lift 20 million Brazilians, or more than 10 percent of the population, out of poverty.

The burgeoning middle class is snapping up cars and building houses at a pace never seen in Brazil before, helping make it a rare bright spot in the global economy along with other developing giants such as China and India.

That legacy was simply too much for Serra to overcome.

Serra mustered just enough support in the first round of voting on October 3 to force a runoff, and briefly closed in on Rousseff in subsequent polls. But she pulled away in the final two weeks as the focus shifted away from her views on social issues such as abortion and back to Lula's economic record.

Rousseff is Lula's former chief of staff and vows to build on his successes by upgrading Brazil's woeful roads, schools and other infrastructure as the country prepares to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games.

She also seeks to exploit Brazil's newfound offshore oil wealth and expand the state's role in the energy sector while continuing to court private investment.

"Her government will focus primarily on solving Brazil's bottlenecks," Fernando Pimentel, a close adviser to her campaign, said in a recent interview.

Rousseff lacks Lula's charisma, and she has shown limited interest in passing major economic reforms, such as an overhaul of Brazil's onerous tax code, that many investors say are necessary to reduce the high cost of doing business.

Some investors also fear she could expand the state's role too much in some areas while failing to rein in heavy budget spending, which has pressured Brazil's real and helped make it the world's most overvalued currency by some measures.

Still, Brazil's stock market, bonds and currency all posted gains in the run-up to the vote -- a stark contrast to the financial panic that preceded the 2002 election of Lula, a former radical.

FROM JAIL TO PRESIDENTIAL CONFIDANT

Rousseff's road to the presidency of the world's eighth-biggest economy was hardly traditional.

The daughter of a well-to-do Bulgarian immigrant, Rousseff joined a leftist guerrilla group during the 1960s and resisted the military dictatorship of that era. She was then jailed for three years and repeatedly tortured with electric shocks.

Upon her release from prison in 1973, she moderated her views and studied economics. She ascended through a range of mid-level government posts in southern Brazil and never showed much political ambition until Lula made her his energy minister, his chief of staff, and then his chosen successor.

Lula has acknowledged Rousseff lacks political experience but chose her because of her skill as a technocrat and administrator. He says those qualities will be critical over the next four years as Brazil tries to bring its infrastructure in line with its ambitions as an emerging world power.

Lula, 65, was barred by the constitution from running for a third consecutive term, but the election of a close lieutenant without a long-standing base of her own may also allow him to remain involved in policy after he steps down on January 1.

On the eve of the election, Rousseff herself said: "Lula will always be present in my government."

Rousseff survived a bout of moderate cancer last year. More recently, she overcame a last-minute corruption scandal that forced a former top aide to resign.

OPPOSITION WILL TRY TO REGROUP

In coming days, Rousseff will be under scrutiny to see whether she makes difficult economic reforms a priority, and whether she fills top cabinet posts with members of the market-friendly wing of her Workers' Party.

The winner of Brazil's presidential election often holds a news conference the day after the vote.

Rousseff's ruling coalition will enjoy a wide majority in Congress that, in theory, should even give her the 60 percent of votes necessary to pass constitutional amendments.

In practice, though, the fractious nature of Brazilian politics -- there are 10 parties in her coalition -- will challenge Rousseff's relatively unproven skills as a dealmaker. She will also face an emboldened opposition PSDB party, which despite Serra's apparent defeat is already vowing to be tougher on her than they were on Lula.

"We cannot let the executive (branch) impose everything, as if this were a monarchy," said Aecio Neves, a senator-elect from Minas Gerais and the likely new leader of the opposition.

Still, the focus for now is on Rousseff and how she plans to continue Brazil's recent run of prosperity.

"The country has never been as good as it is now," said Milton Carneiro, an engineer who voted for Rousseff at a school in Brasilia. "I hope things will continue this way."

(Additional reporting by Eduardo Simoes and Peter Murphy; Editing by Todd Benson and Kieran Murray)

Shows the left can win!

When Lula was about to be elected for the first time everyone of your right wing paid hacks predicted disaster.


Many of the poor of Brazil who were kept poor for generations by US interference in South American politics and it its support for right wing dictators are pleased with progress. Its a popular vote and a clear 10 point lead.

DR will be sure to increase ties with Brazil.

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