President Lula is betting on his extraordinary popularity to get Dilma Roussef elected. But president’s popularity are a hardly transferable personal asset. Roussef has a poor performance on the polls, in spite of having far more exposure as a candidate than anyone else listed on the poll charts. President Lula is conducting an intense pre-campaign, traveling to all electorally relevant states with her by his side, to present government programs with high political visibility. Yet, Dilma Roussef hasn’t been able to transform this exposure in voter preference, and to cross the 15% threshold.

The main opposition party is facing a double internal crisis, since it left government at the end of Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s administration. It is a crisis of identity: the party has no new ideas, no sound projects, no vision for the 21^st Century to support a presidential campaign. A once nest for the moderate liberals of the Brazilian Intelligentsia, the party today has no active think tank, no program, no vision for the future. Even worse, its parliamentary action is marked by inconsistent individual initiatives, some running clearly against the party’s alleged social democratic values. Social democratic senators have, for instances, championed bills to impose censorship to the Internet, or to reduce the legal protection for the Amazon rainforest. Meanwhile, the party’s governors controlling the two major Brazilian states, São Paulo and Minas Gerais, are making every effort to have consistently tolerant and democratic administrations, as well as sound environmental policies. It is also a crisis of leadership. The two likely candidates, São Paulo governor, José Serra, and Minas Gerais governor, Aécio Neves, although trying hard to appear to the public as friendly allies, are working strenuously behind the scenes one against the other. When they recede from these political maneuverings, because they are becoming too detectable, their rank and file make sure the infight goes on. Their attempt to convince the media that they are in mutual agreement, and will decide together who will take the presidential bid, has not been persuasive enough.

Ciro Gomes may have his better chance ever to be at the run-off elections for president in 2010. He was once an active social democratic leadership, and left PSDB only after president Cardoso didn’t grant him the ministerial position he longed for. He is ranked second in many polls, behind his major political foe, José Serra. He blames Serra for intriguing him with Cardoso, and for every negative rumors against him on the press, especially during his two presidential bids. In the 2002 election, he directly confronted Serra, both being defeated by Lula. But Serra made it to the run-off vote against Lula. He acted as Minister for National Integration during president Lula’s first term. The left to run for the House. In the House his performance has been unconvincing. His best political performance was as former president Itamar Franco’s Finance Minister, on a very delicate moment of the Stabilization Plan, and as governor of his home state, Ceará, on Northeastern Brazil.

Gomes is too short-tempered. His chances, if he decides to run, will very much depend on his ability to exercise temperance during the more demanding moments of the campaign. Dilma Roussef, by the way, is also known to be short-tempered. One of her explosions of temper has recently been mentioned by one of her aides as the main cause for to him resign office. In press conferences she is often authoritarian and ill-tempered. Her temperament was never put to a continuing public stress test. A presidential campaign is hardly the best moment for a tryout.

Former environment minister Marina Silva is also set for a presidential bid. She has recently left the Worker’s Party (PT), of which she and president Lula were founding parents. Afterwards she joined the Green Party, a very small organization, and will very likely run under its ticket. Her likely opponents are clearly underestimating her chances. She has, so far, the most contemporary, forward looking ideas to present the Brazilian voter. She has a keen comprehension of the 21^st Century agenda. But she will have to demonstrate her capability to put her ideas on a larger frame of reference, to show she is not a “niche” candidate. She has the only biography that rivals Lula’s. She was born on a poor community of rubber tappers, on a remote area of the Amazon region; she was an illiterate until the age of 17. Today she as a college degree in History and has already demonstrated shrewdness and great intelligence in politics. She has been tested as an elected senator at age of 35, and as Lula’s environment minister. She’s resigned after president Lula took from her political control over the policies for the Amazon region. She has also clashed systematically with chief of Staff Dilma Roussef, over her plans for high-carbon energy and extensive road-building in the Amazon, and other parts of the country. The government’s clear dismissal of climate change as a real threat, and its choice to implement high-carbon projects, finally pushed Marina Silva to the opposition.

Marina Silva’s major disadvantage is her party. The Green Party is small, internally inconsistent and lacks credibility. She is larger than the party, but will have to make sure it does not take over her campaign. Electoral TV time in Brazil is free from charge, and allotted to the candidates in proportion to the share of seats in the House they got on the previous election. As PV’s share is minimum, the ticket will be given little TV time. She can overcome this advantage seeking to form an electoral coalition with other parties. She could, then, add their TV time shares to PV’s, a procedure the electoral law allows. She is also betting on her capability to mobilize the youth, and to use the social media. She is regarded with suspicion by a significant portion of the Brazilian business elite, as being against economic growth.

Dilma Roussef announced today, that her party, PT, might hold a convention later next October to officially declare her a candidate. Such a move would giver her an advantage over her competitors. All of them, for different political reasons, are postponing their official candidacies to the end of the year. The two contending PSDB governors are planning to postpone the announcement of their party ticket to as late as March next year. Marina Silva has been hinting that she won’t go official on hers, before December. Ciro Gomes is also giving signs that he wants to take his time, before announcing whether he’ll run.

Being the only official candidate would turn minister Roussef into the only declared candidate to be addressing voters as such. She would also have to observe some constraints on official candidates from the electoral law. All candidates know that, and it is likely that if PT does announce her candidacy in October, others will follow suit. This early definition of candidacies would precipitate the campaign, and Brazil may be heading for the longest campaign of its recent electoral history. The actual vote will take place only in October, 2010, the deadline for candidates registration is July, 7, 2010, and campaign advertising is due legally to begin only on July, 6. Free TV electoral advertising, the most important campaign instrument in Brazil, will only begin as late as August, 17.

The senator representing Acre, the westernmost state of the Amazon Region, resigned because of recurring conflict with the powerful Chief of Staff and Dilma Roussef’s, especially regarding road-building and hydroelectric plants in the Amazon Region. Minister Roussef was appointed by president Lula as the manager of his Growth Acceleration Program (PAC), a plan for public works with a strong focus on transportation and energy and severe environmental impact on the Amazon region. The president has several times showed his annoyance with his former Environment Minister’s requirements for licensing the larger Amazon projects. He called them “an environmentalist’s hindrance to progress.” Marina’s dissatisfaction peaked when Lula transferred to former minister of Strategic Affairs, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, a Harvard Law professor, responsibility over his “Project for a Sustainable Amazon”. Mangabeira Unger, had no previous knowledge of Amazon affairs, and advocated several policy initiatives that found antagonism among environmentalists, and praise among ranchers and soybean producers in the region. After this decision, she resigned, and returned to her senatorial seat, where she has been highly critical of the government’s anti-environmental bias.

Meanwhile, minister Dilma Roussef became Lula’s ostensive candidate-to-be for the 2010 Presidential race. Lula and his political aides expected that minister Roussef would run a polarized contest against São Paulo’s governor, social-democrat José Serra. They see Serra as an enthusiast of the same approach to economic growth, and thought he would not be able to design a contrasting view and credible enough to confront the official candidate, defending very similar ideas.

The Green Party offer to Marina Silva and her apparent enthusiasm sounded as a sharp warning sign that something was going rather wrong with the government’s political plan. President Lula has immediately sent several emissaries to persuade her to remain on the party, and support Dilma Roussef’s candidacy. They seemed to have all failed.

One of them, former governor of the State of Acre, Jorge Vianna, a close friend to her, said this Sunday that he was still ‘quarantined’ and wasn’t making any comments on Marina Silva’s decisions because he and present governor Binho Marques, also a close friend to Marina, were going to talk to her one more time, reported Altino Machado, a journalist from Acre, after calling him personally. Governor Binho Marques issued a note saying that: “as a friend he was sympathetic, but as a governor he had to guard himself.”

Yesterday Marina Silva received a Honoris Causa Doctorate from the Federal University of Bahia. Bahia’s governor, Jaques Wagner (PT), a close friend to president Lula, was asked by reporters whether he tried her not lo leave the party. He answered that “Marina’s international and national projection have gone so far that none of us have the power to persuade her of anything anymore.” Everybody is taking it for granted that she has already decided to run.

This conviction has certainly been influenced not only by the private conversations they’ve been having with her, but also by her own words to her closer friends and family as journalist’s Altino Machado’s reports: after 32 hours of consultations and reflection, in Rio Branco, the capital city of her home state, she told them: “You don’t have to follow me, stay with PT.”

If all these signs are correct and Marina Silva do leave PT and start negotiating an electoral coalition to support her presidential candidacy, the scenario for Lula’s succession will immediately change. This candidacy has the power to radically alter the competitive structure of the game. Marina Silva has far more personal appeal – call it charisma if you like – than Dilma Roussef.

An illiterate until she was 16 years old, now holds a college degree. She spent her childhood making rubber, hunting and fishing to help her father support their large family. Her political education was on the social movements of the Amazon region, especially among the rubber-gatherers. She was a part of the independent rubber-gatherers union with Chico Mendes, murdered by ranchers in an attempt to halt their movement. She has a bio any political marketeer dreams of. She won the Goldman Environmental Prize for “grassroots environmental heroes,” in 1996, and this year’s Sophie Prize, from Norway, for “her courage, her creativity and her ability to forge alliances, but first and foremost for her battle to conserve the Amazon rainforest.”

The almost totality of Brazilian environmentalists, mostly PT and Lula’s voters, I asked over the last three days are highly enthusiastic about her candidacy. Several of them are looking forward to help her organize a mobilization campaign using the web social network, inspired on Obama’s.

According to sources in Rio Branco, president Lula has called former governor Jorge Vianna, and governor Binho Marques, for a meeting tomorrow, in Brasília, apparently to discuss what can still be done to prevent Marina from officially announcing a decision that appear to have already been subjectively made. If his efforts fail he will also be on dire straits to replace his present Environment Minister who already said will step down on March, to run for Legislative office. President Lula will have to appoint someone with as green credentials as Marina Silva’s and this person won’t be easy to find.

When she decides to run, she will also have a tough job ahead. The first task will be to attract other parties to join her on an electoral coalition, in order to increase her TV campaign time. Prime TV campaign time in Brazil is allotted free of cost to all candidates proportionately to the number of seats obtained in the previous election. The Green Party has a minimum portion. A coalition adds each party’s time, to give its candidate enough time to be competitive. Marina Silva could attract from one to three left-leaning mid-sized parties to her coalition. It won’t be easy, but it is clearly possible. After having ensured she will have enough time on TV during the campaign, she will have to design a political discourse that transcends environmentalism and widens her appeal, with a special eye on wage-earners, worried with their incomes and jobs; and the financial markets and business groups wary of her “leftism.”

Whether she will succeed in setting up a broader appeal time will say. For now, she has agitated the political realm like an Amazon tornado, coming from the waters of the Acre River, and she hasn’t even announced she’d decided to run.