RIO DE JANEIRO: Former Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva has agreed to run for vice president in October elections on the presidential ticket of Eduardo Campos, the governor of Brazil’s Pernambuco state, Globo newspaper reported yesterday.
Silva, who will make her intention publicly known by mid-February, could announce her candidacy at a January 17 meeting of leaders of Campos’ Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), the newspaper said.
Globo did not cite sources for its story, and officials for Silva and Campos did not immediately respond to telephone and e-mail requests from Reuters yesterday.
Silva and Campos, two of the country’s most popular opposition leaders, surprised many when they said in October they would form an alliance but refused to say which of them would stand for president if they made a bid.
Pollsters say their decision to team up could form a serious challenge to President Dilma Rousseff’s hopes of re-election.
Globo reported that in exchange for Silva’s pledge to run alongside Campos, his PSB party had agreed to end its support for the re-election of Geraldo Alckmin of the centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) as governor of Sao Paulo state.
Sao Paulo is Brazil’s richest, most-populous and most industrialised state.
Alckmin is also a former presidential candidate.
REUTERS
