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Brazil's own 'Watergate' scandal rocks president's re-election bid
By Yana Marull
AFP
BRASILIA
Petroleumworld.com 09 23 06
The re-election bid of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been rocked by an alleged attempt to smear his main opponent that has been compared to the Watergate scandal that toppled a US president.
Lula has reshuffled his campaign team and called for a thorough police investigation into the affair, less than two weeks before an election that he has been heavily favored to win.
The scandal erupted last week 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.
"I do not believe in this type of behavior," Lula told Globo television Thursday.
"If comrades had the illusion that they were finding out something so powerful that it could move the entire planet, these people will pay," he said. "I want to know who gave money, if there was money and what this dossier contains."
"We cannot allow this to happen in our political campaign," he said.
Lula added that he had no reason to buy compromising information about his opponent, since opinion polls have given him a comfortable lead heading toward the October 1 election.
Analysts said the scandal may chip away at Lula's lead and force a second round, slated for October 29.
But the most recent poll still gave Lula enough support to win in the first round. The IBOPE institute poll, conducted between Monday and Wednesday, gave Lula 50 percent support compared to 30 percent for Alckmin.
The scandal has led to a shakeup of Lula's campaign team and the resignation of one of his closest advisers.
On Wednesday, Lula replaced his campaign coordinator, Ricardo Berzoini, who is also PT's president, with his international affairs adviser, Marco Aurelio Garcia.
Berzoini admitted knowing about a meeting between two Lula campaign officials and Epoca managazine, but that he was unaware of what was discussed. The magazine said it was offered compromising information about the opposition.
Lula's special adviser, Freud Godoy, resigned on Monday. The attorney arrested last week accused Godoy of being an intermediary in the failed document purchase.
Alckmin questioned how the president could have known nothing about the alleged smear campaign.
"It is not possible to believe that the president had not known about anything, that he was taken by surprise," Alckmin told CBN news radio Thursday.
Alckmin recalled that the PT already had been hit by corruption and illegal financing scandals in the past year, and that although Lula pleaded ignorance at the time, PT and cabinet members lost their jobs.
"It is time for voters to put an end to all of this," the candidate said.
Opposition parties appealed this week to the Supreme Electoral Council (TSE) to disqualify Lula, 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 the attempted wiretapping of the opposition US Democratic Party's headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, which led to the resignation of Republican President Richard Nixon in 1974.
"There is no comparison. That (Watergate) bugging was really terrible. But now what we have here is a bunch of abuses of power," he was quoted as saying in Jornal do Brasil newspaper Thursday.
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 reelected.
AFP 22 0859 GMT 09 06
Copyright ©2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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