Dilma Rousseff: left-wing guerrilla to president-elect of Brazil

Middle-class student Dilma Rousseff joined a Marxist resistance group after Brazil suffered a military coup in 1964. Now she looks set to become Brazil's first female president.

Barring a political cataclysm, Brazilians look set to elect their first female president this weekend: a former urban guerrilla leader turned civil servant, who has never run for public office before. Clearly, Dilma Rousseff a once-ardent Marxist-Leninist is no ordinary politician, says The Independent on Sunday. Supporters claim the elevation of this "stocky and forceful" grandmother is "a celebration of political decency and feminism". The less charitable see it as a leap in the dark.

Rousseff is the hand-picked successor of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who enjoys a stratospheric 80% approval rating in Brazil (see below), notes The Economist. And as one blogger observes: "Lula would win these elections even if he picked a lamp post as a candidate." Some ordinary Brazilians are under the illusion that Rousseff, 63, is Lula's wife. She likes to portray herself as "the mother of all Brazilians". Lula sees her as "his incarnation and guarantee of continuity".

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