Dilma Rousseff re-elected

With 97.62% of ballots counted so far, Brazil's incumbent President Dilma Rousseff (Workers' Party, PT) has had 51.38% of the votes and is mathematically re-elect. Aécio Neves, running under PSDB, had 48.62% of valid votes yet.

Dilma Rousseff, 66 years old, is an economist, and has a daughter and a grandson. She was re-elected today (Oct. 26) alongside the incumbent vice-president Michel Temer (PMDB). In the first round, Rousseff was the most voted with 43,267,668 votes (41.59% of valid votes).

The daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant and a teacher in Rio de Janeiro state, Rousseff lived in Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais, until 1970, where she joined leftist organizations. She was arrested during the military dictatorship in 1970, spent almost three years in prison and faced torture there.

In 1973, she moved to Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, where she made her political career. There, she engaged in the campaign for amnesty at the end of the military government. In 1986, she held her first political office as the head of the Secretariat of the Treasury of Porto Alegre.

In 1993, Rousseff took over the Department of Energy, Mines and Communication of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, a position she held during two administrations. In 2000, Rousseff joined the Workers' Party, and in 2002, she was invited to join the transition team from president Fernando Henrique Cardoso's administration to that of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. When Lula took office in January 2003, he appointed Rousseff for Minister of Mines and Energy. In this role, she led a revision of a regulatory framework for the sector. In 2005, still within Lula's first presidential term, Rousseff took over as chief of staff and was in charge of such projects as the Accelerated Growth Program (PAC) and the Minha Casa, Minha Vida (“My House, My Live”) affordable housing program.

Rousseff resigned as the chief of staff in April 2010. In June that same year, she was officially announced a presidential candidate, and eventually won in the runoff against José Serra, of the PSDB, with over 56,000,000 votes.

Hers was an administration of continuity, maintaining and expanding social welfare programs pursued by former president Lula, and implementing initiatives toward reducing poverty, hunger, and inequality. She introduced the National Program for Access to Professional Education and Employment (PRONATEC) and expanded programs aimed at encouraging business entrepreneurship. She also implemented a program to grant concessions for infrastructure and logistics projects, many of them in connection with staging the 2014 World Soccer Cup. In a government marred by corruption scandals, Rousseff was led to fire six ministers within ten months in 2011. She also faced major economic challenges with a slowing pace of growth and rising inflation.

Translated by Mayra Borges