Saga of three former comrades at heart of Brazilian power struggle

At the heart of tomorrow's presidential election in Brazil is a remarkable political epic starring three former colleagues now locked in a bitter dispute for control of Latin America's biggest democracy.

The outsider Marina Silva is alive only because as a teenager she was determined not to die of disease in her Amazon rainforest home. Seriously ill in a remote community with no medical facility, this mixed-race daughter of illiterate rubber tappers made her way to the jungle city of Rio Branco pleading for help at its bishop's residence.

She was taken in by nuns, nursed and later learned to read and write, aged 16. She worked as a maid to earn her keep, cleaning the toilets of the better off as she studied, eventually earning a college degree.

She thought her vocation was to become a nun, but the Brazilian Catholic church’s liberation theology led her towards social activism. She became a defender of the rights of rubber tappers and their jungle homes against powerful ranchers and emerged as one of the first leaders of Brazil’s environmental movement.

Charismatic leader

She joined the left-wing Workers Party, where she came to know its charismatic leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. She and the black rubber-tapper and shoeshine boy who, as a union leader, defied the generals, became party icons, two children drawn from the vast well of Brazilian poverty fighting together for a fairer future.

Heavily pregnant Silva trekked through the jungle seeking votes for Lula when he ran for the presidency. At first he failed, but she was elected to the senate in 1994; and in 2002, when finally voted in, Lula named Silva as his environment minister.

But the realities of power were to erode their alliance. Silva was one of the better ministers during Lula’s administration, but it was rocked by a massive corruption scandal that forced several of his senior colleagues to resign, eventually landing them in jail.

To help right his capsizing government he turned to his energy minister Dilma Rousseff, a political interloper who would become the ultimate insider. A former guerrilla jailed and tortured during the dictatorship, Rousseff joined the Workers Party only in 2000 as it closed in on power.

But despite being an outsider, her tough managerial approach to Brazil’s unruly bureaucracy and enormous appetite for work caught Lula’s eye. Her power within his administration grew, partially at the expense of Marina Silva. Never close to Silva, Rousseff led the critics of the environmental minister, accusing her of holding up development projects in her beloved Amazon with overly rigorous vetting procedures for environmental licences.

Lula eventually had to adjudicate between his warring ministers. He chose the side of his new right-hand woman but could not bring himself to fire his old partner. Instead he allowed Rousseff to grind her down until, her authority undermined, Silva resigned in 2008.

Rousseff was now firmly on her way to becoming the second president from the Workers Party. Silva meanwhile quit the movement after over two decades. In 2010 she won over 19 million votes for the Greens in the election that elevated Rousseff to the presidency.

New party

She then tried to found a new party but could not register in time to contest this year’s contest. So instead she joined the Socialists and was the party’s vice-presidential candidate when tragedy intervened.

The plane crash that killed her running mate Eduardo Campos in August thrust Silva back into a direct confrontation with Rousseff. The polls showed she could beat her in a country increasingly fed up at Workers Party incompetence and corruption.

The reaction by the Workers Party machine against its former comrade was vicious. Silva was subjected to a campaign of smears that left shocked commentators making comparisons to the Nazis. The woman who saw her parents go hungry so she and her siblings could eat was accused of wanting to allow bankers take the food off the table of poor Brazilians.

Silva cried publicly at the idea Lula could do this to her. Lula played coy, mouthing his respect for “Dona Marina”, but Rousseff dismissed her complaints, saying anyone who thought of themselves as a “poor little thing” should not be running for president.

The president knows how brutal the struggle for power can be. Her remorselessly lampooned front teeth are prominent because of a military interrogator’s punch to her jaw. The negative campaigning has restored Rousseff’s lead in the polls, though it would not have gained so much traction if it had not contained within it legitimate questions about Silva’s positions or how she plans to rule with little support in congress, questions she has failed to answer convincingly.

What happens next will be decided tomorrow by Brazil’s 143 million voters. Silva must fight off a late surge from the centre-right candidate Aécio Neves if she is to hold on to second place and force a run-off with Rousseff set for three weeks’ time. If the campaign so far is any indication a Silva- Rousseff showdown could be deeply unedifying spectacle for Brazilian democracy.

Outright win

But the president still holds an outside chance of taking over 50 per cent of the vote to win outright and so avoid the need for any run-off. That would mean four more years of Rousseff and Workers Party in power, but not an end to the saga.

Silva knows it took Lula four campaigns before he won the presidency. She will surely be back in 2018, most likely leading her own party. Then she could face Lula himself, her old colleague and leader.

Despite 12 years in power, the Workers Party has had difficulty in nurturing a new generation of leaders. Lula remains hugely popular and is probably the party’s best chance of winning the presidency in four years’ time. This Brazilian political epic has several chapters left in it yet.