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A corruption scandal has brought down President Lula’s chief of staff – two weeks before his ally Dilma Rousseff is likely to be elected Brazil’s new president.

The scandal has not dented Dilma’s opinion-poll dominance over centre-right opposition candidate José Serra (both pictured). But it could do – if this weekend sees further relevations linking her directly to alleged corruption.

The story broke last weekend, with allegations published in Veja magazine that Israel Guerra, the son of Lula’s chief of staff Erenice Guerra, had solicited money from companies to arrange government contracts and loans. After more accusations emerged in Thursday’s edition of newspaper Folha de São Paulo, Guerra announced her resignation, a decision backed by Lula and Dilma.

A political analyst at a consultancy in the capital Brasília told beyondbrics:

In Brazil it’s quite common to hire consultants to help companies and local governments apply for federal money, and sometimes this involves using political access. It’s not exactly legal and it’s not exactly illegal.

What Israel is accused of having done is definitely illegal, even by Brazilian standards. He was selling access.

People are saying that the money was requested to settle ‘political issues’. In Brazil we know that this means providing money to campaigns. The few people that have the clout to get money from the business sector do so, and distribute the money to campaigns at the state or federal level.”

Israel’s mother was one of Dilma’s right-hand people when she (Dilma) was chief staff. However, to many voters, that isn’t a strong enough connection. As a result, the analyst says:

With the present content, this case cannot reach much more than the middle classes in the big cities of Brazil. It’s very difficult to sell this as something related to Dilma Rousseff.

Dilma enjoys a healthy lead over Serra – with 51 per cent of intended voters to his 27 per cent, according to the latest Datafolha poll.

The same poll reveals that another scandal – in which people linked to Dilma’s left-wing Workers’ Party were accused of illegally accessing the private financial information of the opposition – had almost no effect on voter opinion, despite being on the front pages of the major dailies for weeks.

The Workers’ Party has come through scandal before. In 2005 and 2006, it was accused of paying members of congress monthly fees to vote for their favoured legislation. Lula himself emerged unscathed, but the case led to the resignation of several key advisers.

Some analysts have suggested that Dilma’s own fortunes were boosted by that scandal, as, when the dust settled, she seemed the best successor to Lula.

But Dilma’s chances of coming through the latest accusations unscathed depend on what Veja publishes this weekend.

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