SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Marina Silva, the Green Party candidate who placed a surprisingly strong third in Brazil’s presidential election and has emerged as a potential kingmaker in the runoff vote, sounds very unlikely to endorse either remaining candidate.
In an interview with Reuters yesterday, Silva declined to explicitly say whether she would urge her party to support ruling party candidate Dilma Rousseff, Jose Serra of the opposition PSDB, or remain neutral at a convention on Sunday.
However, she said she was disappointed with the aggressive tone of both campaigns since she received 19 percent of the vote in the first round of the election on October 3, and said she saw few clear differences between Rousseff and Serra.
Silva said both campaigns had reached out to her for support, and she was still listening.
Yet, when asked if either candidate had set themselves apart since the first round, Silva replied: “Up until now, regrettably, I think they’re missing a big opportunity to debate Brazil with depth.”
“They’re both very similar,” Silva said.
“They’re both developmentalists, pro-growth … they seem like managers. But Brazil doesn’t need just a manager. It needs somebody with strategic vision.”
She said both current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his predecessor, the PSDB’s Fernando Henrique Cardoso, demonstrated such vision by creating social welfare programmes and taming inflation, respectively.
“Brazil still needs this kind of vision,” Silva said. “When you have it, you can go get the best managers. But when you’re just a manager, we can easily lose our momentum on things that need to be done.”
