Sao Paulo, Brazil– The president of the governing Workers’ Party said Friday he was stepping down in the wake of a corruption scandal that had battered Brazil’s president during his re-election campaign.
Ricardo Berzoini, who had resigned as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s campaign manager before the Oct. 1 vote but stayed on as party president, told a news conference he wanted time away from the leftist Workers’ Party.
He will be replaced by Marco Aurelio Garcia, Sliva’s former adviser and current campaign manager.
According to a police investigation, Berzoini’s former aide Oswaldo Bargas attempted to pay $781,000 for a dossier with incriminating information about Silva’s former political opponent, Jose Serra.
Serra, who lost the presidential elections to Silva in 2002, belongs to the Social Democratic Party, the same party of Silva’s main challenger in this year’s election, Gerald Alckmin.
Alckmin and Silva will face each other in a runoff election scheduled for Oct. 29.
Analysts say the corruption scandal cost Silva key support ahead of the first round of voting last Sunday, when he failed to win a 50 percent plus one vote majority and was forced to an Oct. 29 runoff against Alckmin.
On Friday evening, officials also said the center-left party would expel all members involved in the scandal. It was unclear how many members would be involved in the purge.
Meanwnhile, a new opinion survey has found that Silva was holding a lead over his challenger ahead of Brazil’s Oct. 29 presidential runoff vote.
It was the first poll released following the Oct. 1 presidential election, in which Silva failed to win an outright majority, forcing a second round of voting against the second-place candidate, former Sao Paulo Gov. Geraldo Alckmin.
Friday’s poll by the Datafolha institute shows Silva receiving 54 percent of the votes, while Alckmin would receive 46 percent. It had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
In the first round of voting, Silva received 48.6 percent support, while Alckmin got about 42 percent. Candidates must get more than 50 percent to win in the first round.
