Brazilians are mourning the sudden death of presidential candidate Eduardo Campos, who was killed in a plane crash last week.
President Dilma Rousseff and former president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, joined several other government officials at an open-air mass to pay their respects to the former governor of Pernambuco, who had been running third in opinion polls.
“We lost a leader, one of the best governors that Pernambuco ever had,” said Luiza Silva, 58, who criticised the presence of Campos’ political opponents at his funeral.
His running mate, renowned environmentalist Marina Silva, is set to be catapulted to the head of the presidential ticket of the PSB (Brazilian Socialist Party).
“I have the sense of responsibility and commitment imposed by the loss of Campos,” Silva told journalists as she landed in Recife on Saturday. A devout Christian, she said an act of “divine providence” spared her from being with Campos in the private jet that crashed last Wednesday.
The PSB is scheduled to officially launch Silva’s candidacy on Wednesday, a first opinion poll showing the new political scenario is expected to be released on Monday. The outpouring of public sympathy for Campos may initially translate into a popularity boost for Silva, who won nearly 20 percent of the votes when she first ran for president in 2010. Pollsters and political commentators forecast that Silva is likely to come ahead of or statistically tie in second place with Senator Aecio Neves, an opposition presidential candidate who is running on a market-friendly platform.
Brazil’s first-round vote is scheduled for October 5th. Incumbent Rousseff leads current opinion polls. Many analysts predict that if Silva makes it to a second-round runoff on October 26th, she will probably be a tougher contender than Neves, since she is more likely to appeal to disillusioned younger voters. Silva also has a loyal following among evangelical voters, an increasingly influential demographic in Brazil.
