President Lula and Candidate Dilma Rousseff. Source: Google Images
Dilma Rousseff, the less-than-glamorous heir-apparent to Brazil’s leftist President Lula, is being accused of exerting pressure on a government official to whitewash an investigation into a political ally. See FT article on the subject. These corruption investigations snarl Brazil’s Congress all the time, and some blow over, while others balloon. What will happen to this one could affect Dilma’s chances in the presidential election of 2010, which is getting under way. Dilma, former guerrilla tortured under Brazil’s military regime in the 1970s, Lula’s chief of staff, energy minister and chairwoman of Petrobras, Brazil’s part-state-owned energy company, may not coast as easily into the Brazilian presidency as Barack Obama did into the White House. Stay tuned…
