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Brazil's Lula says party scandal no Watergate
AFP
BRASILIA
Petroleumworld.com 09 23 06
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Friday rejected a chief election official's comment that a scandal in his re-election campaign was worse than the Watergate affair that toppled a US president.
"In Watergate, it was a matter of a government having ordered the break-in of the headquarters of a party. Here, it involves a group of people who are not members of the party's leadership, who were working temporarily in the campaign and who tried to buy a dossier," Lula told CBN radio.
"That's very deplorable, but that has nothing to do" with the Watergate scandal, he said, referring to the spying on an opposition party's headquarters that forced then-US president Richard Nixon to resign in 1974.
The Watergate comparison arose Thursday in a newspaper article quoting the chief justice of the Supreme Electoral Council (TSE), which had been asked by opposition parties to disqualify Lula for re-election, alleging that he had "benefited from abuses of power" ahead of the October 1 vote.
TSE chief justice Marco Aurelio de Mello said the scandal was much worse than Watergate.
"There is no comparison. That (Watergate) bugging was really terrible. But now what we have here is an accumulation of abuses of power," he was quoted as saying in the Jornal do Brasil newspaper.
Mello said it was too late for the court to make a ruling before the October 1 vote. But he said a later ruling could complicate Lula's bid to stay in power if he is re-elected.
Lula repeatedly has denied involvement in the alleged attempt to smear his main opponent.
The scandal erupted a week ago, when a member of Lula's leftist Workers' Party (PT) and an attorney close to the PT were arrested in Sao Paulo with the equivalent of 800,000 dollars.
The pair said the PT leadership had directed them to buy documents allegedly implicating Lula's main rival, presidential candidate Geraldo Alckmin of the social-democratic PSDB party, and Jose Serra, PSDB's candidate in Sao Paulo's gubernatorial race, in a corruption scandal.
Less than two weeks before the election that he is heavily favored to win, Lula reshuffled his campaign team and called for a thorough police investigation into the affair.
Analysts said the scandal may chip away at Lula's lead and force a second round, slated for October 29.
The latest public opinion poll showed a slight dip in the president's voter support.
A poll by the IBOPE institute released Thursday showed 49 percent of registered voters would back Lula's re-election, down from 50 percent in the prior poll on September 15.
Meanwhile, support for Alckmin rose to 30 percent from 29 percent, IBOPE said.
The survey of 3,010 registered voters was conducted in 203 cities between Monday and Wednesday. It has a two-percentage-point margin of error.
AFP 22 1851 GMT 09 06
Copyright ©2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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