Dilma Rousseff

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Dilma Vana Rousseff
Chief of Staff of Brazil
In office June 21, 2005 – present
Preceded by	José Dirceu
Born	14 December, 1947 Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais
Residence	Brasília, Federal District
Profession	Economist, politician

Dilma Vana Rousseff Linhares (Born December 14, 1947) is a Brazilian economist and politician, of Bulgarian origin.^[1] She is a member of the Worker's Party and was appointed as the Chief of Staff of the Presidency of the Republic of Brazil in 2005. She was the first female to assume that position, might become the next president of the country.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Personal life 3 Presidential candidate 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Biography

Dilma Rousseff was born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais on December 14, 1947 to Bulgarian-Brazilian engineer and poet Pedro Rousseff (born Pétar Russév, Петър Русев in Bulgarian) and schoolteacher Dilma Jane Silva.^[2] He was an active member of the Bulgarian Communist Movement in the 1920s and fled Bulgaria because of political reasons in 1929, settling in France, where he lived until the end of World War II. After the war he moved to Argentina and later on to Brazil where he got married.

Dilma Rousseff joined the resistance movement against the military dictatorship in the mid 1960s, acting in left-wing guerrilla groups such as the Vanguarda Armada Revolucionária Palmares (Palmares Armed Revolutionary Vanguard),^[3] Comando de Libertação Nacional (National Liberation Command) and the Política Operária (Worker's Politics). She was captured by the political police and found guilty in a military trial, without the right of an attorney, and sent to jail, where she was repeatedly tortured from 1970 to 1973. In December 2006, the Special Commission for Reparation of the Human Rights Office for the State of Rio de Janeiro approved Rousseff's request for indemnification.

By the late 1970s, Rousseff married political militant Carlos Araújo and settled in Rio Grande do Sul, where they had a daughter. In 1977, she graduated from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul Economic Science School. Two years later, she received a master's degree and a PhD in Economic and Monetary Theory at the State University of Campinas.

Rousseff took part in the restructuring movement of the Brazilian Labour Party, linked to the group of Leonel Brizola. After the Supreme Electoral Court gave the group linked to Ivete Vargas, Getúlio Vargas' niece, registry of the party name, Dilma and the group linked to Brizola took part in the foundation of the Democratic Labour Party.

The party won the 1990 gubernatorial election in Rio Grande do Sul and Rousseff was appointed Secretary of Energy by Governor Alceu Collares. She remained on the office until Collares' term ended in 1995. In 1998, Olívio Dutra, gubernatorial candidate from the Worker's Party, won the state election with the support of the Democratic Labour Party and Rousseff once again was appointed head of the Energy Bureau.

The following year, the Democratic Labour Party left the state government and demanded the same from its members. Rousseff left the party and joined the Worker's Party to remain in the government.

In January 2003, president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva appointed Rousseff as the Energy Minister. In June 21, 2005, she became the Chief of Staff, replacing José Dirceu, who left the position over media pressure and accusations of involvement in corruption. As a former Energy Minister, Rousseff is also the chairman of the board of directors of the Brazilian oil company Petrobras^[4] and is considered a possible presidential candidate for the Worker's Party in the 2010 general elections.^[5]

[edit] Personal life

Rousseff was married twice, both times with partners from resistance organizations against the dictatorship. She was first married to Cláudio Galeno de Magalhães Linhares. Later, she got married to Carlos Franklin Paixão de Araújo, with whom she had her only child, Paula Rousseff de Araújo. Her daughter recently got married to Rafael Covolo.

[edit] Presidential candidate

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With Brazil's presidential elections due next year, the world's fourth largest democracy is now shifting into campaign mode as Lula's potential successors jostle for position. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva continues to enjoy a phenomenal 80% popular approval rating, but he has indicated that he will step down at the end of his second term of office, as he is constitutionally required to, rather than seek to subvert the constitutional limit, the option of so many other Latin American leaders.

This poses his Brazilian Workers' Party (PT) with a problem of finding a viable successor. Lula is pushing his current chief of staff, Dilma Rousseff, a former guerrilla, who he has sought to publicly associate with his programme for economic growth. However, Rousseff lacks Lula's charisma and, with the Brazilian economy now slowing down, there is no guarantee that his popularity will rub off on her. PT is still tarnished by the corruption allegations that destroyed most of its leadership in Lula's first term.

The party gained some votes in the Northeast in last year's local elections, but it did badly in São Paulo where its candidate, Martha Smith Suplicy, fought a poor, and discreditable, campaign. Suplicy had been talked of as a possible PT presidential candidate, but is now out of the race. Tarso Genro, the widely respected former mayor of Porto Alegre and current minister for justice, is one of the party's only other options, but is unlikely to run this time.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Dilma Rousseff

• Biographical Data of Minister Dilma Vana Rousseff from the website of the Presidency of Brazil