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.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
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