Brazil’s presidential election campaign took a tragic turn when Eduardo Campos, the Socialist Party candidate, died in an air crash on August 13th. His death shocked the electorate.
For the past twenty years, Brazilian presidents have come from either the Workers’ Party, of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and incumbent Dilma Rousseff, or the Social Democratic Party of former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and opposition leader, Aécio Neves.
Campos tried to open a third way.
Marina Silva, an environmentalist, became the PSB’s candidate. Her economic advisers include André Lara Resende, one of the architects of the so-called Real Plan, which put an end to hyperinflation in the mid-1990s. She has pledged to stick to fiscal responsibility, inflation targeting and a free-floating exchange rate. She has also endorsed Campos’ intention to grant formal autonomy to the central bank.