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Marina Silva (left) and Dilma Rousseff are seen during a televised presidential debate in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Photos: AP

Presidential underdog Marina Silva in with a shout of victory in Brazil

Marina Silva only stood after running mate died - but polls show she'd beat Dilma Rousseff in a run-off to become Brazil's first black president

AFP

A fiery plane crash that claimed the life of a popular politician has provided Brazil's presidential campaign with a dramatic plot twist worthy of a telenovela. It may end with the election of the country's first black president.

Just two weeks before millions of Brazilians heads to the polls on October 5, environmentalist Marina Silva, 56, has emerged from nowhere as a serious threat to President Dilma Rousseff's hopes of securing re-election.

Silva's rise is all the more remarkable given that she was not in the running for the highest office until the August 13 plane crash that claimed the life of the Socialist Party's original candidate Eduardo Campos.

Silva, his running mate, was subsequently installed as the Socialist Party's challenger and is now tantalisingly close to ending the 12-year rule of Rousseff's Workers' Party.

She has her sights set on surviving the first-round ballot next month to enter a run-off that most analysts project will give her a real chance of securing victory.

Unlike the first round of voting, Brazil's election laws grant candidates in any run-off the same amount of television and radio time - a factor likely to benefit Silva's campaign.

The latest Datafolha opinion poll shows Rousseff widening her lead over Silva, carving a seven-point margin from 37 per cent to 30 per cent. However, a succession of polls have indicated the two rivals would be virtually neck-and-neck in a run-off, with many surveys suggesting Silva would be the likelier winner.

Daniel Alves, a political scientist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, said that Silva's rags-to-riches backstory had struck a chord with millions of her compatriots.

"Brazilians like to believe that everything is possible if you work hard and have faith," Alves said.

"Marina Silva is mixed-race, was born and raised in the poor interior of Brazil, and now has a chance of becoming president of Brazil. She is the embodiment of the hope that Brazilians have."

Silva has responded forcefully, insisting that her humble beginnings prevented her from forgetting her obligations.

"Dilma, I am not going to stoop to fight on your level. Of course I am going to maintain family support payments, and do you know why? Because I was born in Seringal Bagaco [in Brazil's impoverished Acre state]. I know what it is to feel hunger.

"The only food my mother sometimes had to feed eight children was one egg and some flour and salt, with a little bit of diced onion," she said.

"I remember once having looked at my father and at my mother," she said, becoming emotional. "I asked them, are you two going to eat? And my mother answered, 'No, we're not hungry...' but later I came to understand that there was more than one day that they didn't eat.

"Anyone who has ever experienced that could never do away with family welfare payments."

University of Sao Paulo political science professor Rubens Figueiredo said the next two weeks would be fiercely competitive.

"The big problem faced by Marina is that she has a very weak party coalition, and very limited financial resources compared to the Workers' Party," he said.

"She has has a much weaker campaign organisation, has had much less time on television and this is the first time that she is experiencing what it is like to be attacked as a candidate, because in 2010 [when she first ran for elective office] she was celebrated everywhere she went, and was not yet seen as a threat."

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Tragedy gives outsider shot at poll victory
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