BRAD BROOKS
Associated Press
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s presidential candidates faced off in a heated debate Friday night just two days before their runoff election, with the focus on allegations of corruption and arguments over who could best spark a stalled economy.
The widely watched debate came just hours after the news magazine Veja published a report alleging that President Dilma Rousseff knew about and her party benefited from a purported kickback scheme at state-run oil company Petrobras.
Opposition candidate Aecio Neves immediately jumped on the report, asking Rousseff in his first question if she knew about the scheme. She said she didn’t.
The allegations were made by Alberto Youssef, a convicted black-market money dealer who said that he laundered hundreds of millions in the scheme and that the governing Workers’ Party benefited from it. But he gave no proof during his testimony to the investigators he is cooperating with in exchange for a lighter sentence.
“This magazine has engaged in libel and you’re endorsing it with your question,” said Rousseff, who indicated she plans to sue Veja. “They’re trying to make an electoral coup. … The people aren’t stupid; they know when they’re being manipulated.”
Later, responding to a question from an undecided voter in the audience who expressed dismay with corruption, Neves said that “the best measure to take to end corruption in government is to take the Workers’ Party out of the government.”
The candidates then moved on to the other big question of the night — what to do about Brazil’s economy. It expanded 7.5 percent in 2010, the year before Rousseff took power, but has stumbled since, with expectations of growth below 0.5 percent this year. Inflation is floating above the government’s own target of 6.5 percent.
Rousseff has said that under her watch Brazil’s unemployment is at historic lows and workers’ wages have risen.
She has given the state an expanded role in the economy, which the center-right Neves has said he would shrink. Neves also would seek trade deals with the European Union, work for expanded commercial relations with the U.S. and privatize state-run enterprises that he says are inefficient.
“You’ve said in recent debates that inflation is under control,” Neves said to Rousseff. “I don’t believe that. I’ll give you another opportunity — what would your government, if re-elected, do to control inflation?”
The president responded by railing against the economic record of Neves’ Social Democracy Party when it held the presidency in 1995-2003, a time of intense economic turbulence in Brazil but also when a new currency and economic plan was introduced that ended the hyperinflation that had crippled the country for years.
“My promise is to control inflation,” Rousseff said. “During the last 10 years we’ve maintained inflation within the targeted limit.”
She added that during the global financial meltdown of 2008, the Workers’ Party “took on that crisis and we didn’t allow wages to fall.”
Other questions from undecided voters centered on violence, drug trafficking and the lack of basic sewage for about 40 percent of Brazilian households.
Neves said if elected he would increase federal investment in patrolling Brazil’s porous borders over which cocaine, marijuana and arms easily flow. He also said he would have “a different policy with countries that produce drugs” like Brazil’s neighbors Peru, Bolivia and Colombia.
Rousseff responded by underscoring her efforts to better coordinate federal and state security forces. She pointed to the lack of serious security problems during this year’s World Cup as a model of how cooperation across all levels of government could be carried out.
The Ibope polling institute, which also provides television ratings, said more than 60 percent of Brazilian TV sets were tuned into the debate.
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