Dilma Rousseff, Lula's enforcer, is favourite to be next Brazilian president

[Judi Lynn]

Dilma Rousseff, Lula's enforcer, is favourite to be next Brazilian president
Dilma Rousseff might lack charisma, but she has won the nomination of the ruling party in October poll
Rory Carroll in Lima
The Observer, Sunday 14 March 2010

She has never been elected to office, hardly radiates charisma and inhabits a political landscape dominated by men, but Dilma Rousseff has a great chance of becoming Brazil's next president.

Once dismissed as simply an acolyte of her boss, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, she has clinched the ruling party's nomination for October's presidential election and is riding high in the polls. Analysts who wrote off Rousseff, right, now tip her as a favourite to take charge of a booming economy with almost 200 million people and become the most powerful leader – male or female – in Latin America.

Lula, who steps down with stellar ratings after eight years in office, said the first sign "that machismo will be defeated" was selecting his chief of staff as a successor. "She won't only carry on , but… perfect it and do much more," he said.

An increasing number of Brazilians agree. After languishing in the polls a distant second to her conservative rival, São Paulo governor José Serra, Rousseff, 62, has closed the gap to just four points. Serra's backers are growing anxious and in the past week a would-be running mate has cried off.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/14/brazil-lula-election-dilma-rousseff

[protocol rv]

1. Wait a second

The report says the conservative rival, José Serra, is ahead by 4 points. Which tells me at this time he's the favorite to win the elections. It's amazing, isn't it, how figures can be ignored and mis-reported? I would have titled the piece "Roussef behind but cathing up fast".

[Peace Patriot]

2. Good news! Thanks for posting! LEFTIST polices are certainly being reaffirmed in South America,

despite the anomaly of a rightwing billionaire getting elected in Chile. I think his tenure will be short, and Dilma Roussef's will be long, like Lulu and Chavez, and other hugely popular presidents such as Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador, Lugo in Paraguay, Batchelet in Chile and the Kirchners in Argentina.

I still don't understand the Chilean election. The outgoing (termed out) LEFTIST president, Michele Batchelet, has an eighty percent approval rating! That is huge and it cannot all be personality. How could her designated successor have lost? Rabs said that it's because Batchelet's socialist party is too stodgy and not leftist enough, and that the billionaire winning will result in the party cleaning house and new talent coming forward in four years. I've also read that Batchelet can run again in four years and intends to. It's certainly possible that Batchelet wants to move the party and the country to the left. Her administration has been one of the most "centrist" (corporate/U.S. friendly) of the leftist governments in the region; however, Batchelet herself has done some rather amazing things, for instance, she was pivotal in stopping the U.S. funded/organized white separatist insurrection against Evo Morales (first indigenous president of Bolivia, a mostly indigenous country) in 2008. After Morales threw the U.S. ambassador out of Bolivia for his collusion with the white separatist rioters, she called an emergency meeting of UNASUR and got unanimous backing (even from Colombia) for Morales and two commissions went to Bolivia to help Morales end the conflict. She also ended Chile's 100+year old dispute with Bolivia (once a cause of war) by granting Bolivia access to the sea (--something that I suspect that this billionaire, Sebastian Pinera, will try to undo, at Hillary's/Leon Panetta's request, as part of their "divide and conquer" strategy).

And Batchelet it was who told the joke to a group of U.S. investors, after the U.S. instigated coup attempt in Bolivia, "Why has there never been a coup in the United States?" Answer: "Because there is no U.S. embassy in the United States."*

She is quite adamant on the SOVEREIGNTY of Latin America countries and opposition to U.S. interference--the most important unifying issue--and also seems to be on board for Chavez's and Lulu's "raise all boats" philosophy--pulling together, helping weaker countries, having each other's backs and aiming at a Latin American "common market."

Like Dilma Roussef, Batchelet was tortured by the U.S.-installed fascist government. And it's interesting how many of the new leftist leaders were jailed, tortured or otherwise oppressed, and/or were part of resistance groups, during the U.S. ravages in Latin America of the 1970s-1990s (mainly Reagan era). This list includes Chavez, Lulu, Roussef, Batchelet, Mujica (Uruguay), Lugo (Paraguay), Morales (Bolivia), Ortega (Nicaragua) and Funes (El Salvador--Funes' party, the FMLN, was the resistance, but I think he wasn't personally involved in the resistance--he was too young).

The list now includes Mel Zelaya, president of Honduras. In June 2009, U.S. funded thugs (Honduran military) shot up his house, beat him up, terrorized his family and exiled him at gunpoint, stopping at the U.S. military base in Honduras for re-fueling; then, upon his courageous return to the country, the U.S. funded Honduran military subjected him, his family and staff to various harassment and torture tactics while they resided at the Brazilian embassy in Honduras. Many Zelaya supporters got even worse treatment--up to and including beheading by rightwing death squads (no doubt funded by U.S. tax dollars).

Here is Roussef's history, summarized by the OP:

"The daughter of a Belo Horizonte teacher, she became a middle-class radical and joined the underground leftist resistance to the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. Details of her guerrilla days are sketchy but it is said she helped in the famous robbery of $2.4m from the safe of a corrupt former São Paulo governor. She was jailed for almost three years and tortured, including receiving electric shocks." --from the OP (my emphasis)

The CIA pioneered its torture tactics in Latin America, using these future presidents of Latin America as experimental guinea pigs with the CIA's SOA grads generally as the operatives. The utter failure of this horrendous tactic--except at enriching the rich and the corporate--doesn't seem to register in Washington. I thought--we all thought--that our "empire" had grown out it. But then the Bush Junta happened.

Which brings me to my *, above. Batchelet's joke was funny and apparently she got a laugh from the U.S. investors. However, it presumes that no coup has ever occurred in the U.S. I don't believe that any more. The Bush Junta was a coup, and the U.S. so-called election in 2004, was part 2 of that coup--four more years of war, torture and massive looting of the government and the country. And the coup is on-going, due to the fast-tracked installation, during the 2002 to 2004 period, of voting systems, all over the U.S., run on 'TRADE SECRET' programming code, owned and controlled by a handful of rightwing corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls. This situation is now worse than in 2004, and I believe that it is why there has been no reform here. 'TRADE SECRET' voting systems are the ultimate blockade of reform. And our Democratic leadership went along with it. They--including Obama--are functioning by permission of people like the ultra-rightwing, multi-billionaire Howard Ahmanson, the initial funder and major investor in ES&S, which just bought out Diebold, and now has an 85% monopoly on U.S. voting systems.

Latin America is on its own. They will get no help whatsoever from Washington on social justice, democracy or sovereignty. They can expect only trouble and horror from the U.S.--such as the U.S.-instigated mayhem and horrors in Honduras and Colombia. Indeed, I'm fairly certain that H Clinton is laying the ground work for U.S. Oil War II: South America--as her husband did on Iraq. The U.S. far rightwing now has the capability--the EASY capability--of installing another "war president" like Bush Jr., who will be crude, lawless and utterly oblivious to the views of the American people. We are helpless to prevent it (--unless we get rid of these 'TRADE SECRET' voting systems, which is still doable, though difficult).

It is also possible that our corporate rulers and war profiteers could blackmail Obama into a war in Latin America, as they tried to do to JFK ("Bay of Pigs"). Chavez said that Obama is "the prisoner of the Pentagon." I would say he is the "prisoner of the Pentagon and ES&S." If he doesn't do the bidding of the corporate rulers/war profiteers, he will be tossed out. (I do think he won, in 2008--by a bigger mandate than we know--but he was also permitted to win, and the American people were voting for far more than what they got. They wanted a big change and they got, oh, 1% of the change they wanted. ES&S/Diebold also control Congress.)

I think Lulu, over the course of his career as president of Brazil, has realized this. He took a stance of resistance to U.S. dictates, back in 2006, when he openly backed Chavez (the target of U.S. plots during the 2006 Venezuelan election). With Honduras, he discovered that the Obama administration is no better--and may be worse--than the Bush Junta (as to Latin America). And he recently really gave the middle finger to the U.S. by inviting the president of Iran to Brazil. He is fed up with the U.S. And it appears that most of Latin America is as well.

All of Latin America had a unity meeting, recently, organized by the Rio Group (all Latin American--no U.S.--dispute resolution group) and the plan is to set up an alternative to the OAS (where the U.S. is a member and routinely prevents the interests of Latin Americans from being strongly addressed). UNASUR is a prototype all-South American (no U.S.) "common market." Venezuela and Cuba set up ALBA, in the Central America/Caribbean region. I think we will ultimately see an all-Latin America "common market," while the U.S., by tooth and claw, tries to hang onto as many U.S. client states as it can, in its "circle the wagons" area (Central America/Caribbean), but I think it will fail to net in Venezuela's oil coast. A U.S. oil war will fail, just as its torture program in Latin America in the 1980s failed. They tortured and killed many thousands of people, but they also inadvertently trained the future leadership of Latin America, which would leave the U.S. in the dust, as it makes the 21st century Latin America's century.