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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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