Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s chief of staff resigned on Thursday over an ethics scandal that the opposition is trying to use to derail his candidate in next month’s presidential election.
Erenice Guerra, whose role as Cabinet chief is an influential post in the Lula government, had been under growing pressure in recent days to step down over allegations that she was involved in a kickback scheme for public works contracts.
Trailing badly in opinion polls, main opposition candidate Jose Serra has sought to link the scandal to ruling party contender Dilma Rousseff, who preceded Guerra as Lula’s chief of staff before hitting the campaign trail.
Rousseff remains on course to win a majority of votes in the first round of voting on Oct. 3 and become Brazil’s first woman president, despite the allegations that she condoned unethical conduct within her leftist Workers’ Party.
She has not been directly linked to any wrongdoing, which analysts say makes it unlikely the scandals will cut her lead.
“The chances that it forces a second round are still rather small. The opposition would have to be very skilled to exploit this incident,” said Amaury de Souza, a Rio de Janeiro-based political analyst.
“The corruption scandals so far didn’t change voter preference except among those with higher education or income. That is insufficient to change the odds,” de Souza said.
Rousseff has 51 percent of voter intention against 27 percent for Serra of the opposition PSDB party, according to a Datafolha poll released on Thursday.
The same poll last week showed Rousseff with 50 percent against Serra’s 27 percent.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
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