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Bulgarians proud to see one of their own as president of Brazil
01.10.2010 @ 19:31 CET
She is half-Bulgarian.
And, bar an upset, she is sure to head the wold's fifth most populous state and eighth largest economy.
Sixty-two year old Dilma Rousseff is expected to become Brazil's first female president, possibly from the first round of the election scheduled for 3 October.
Brazilian presidential election front-runner Dilma Rousseff poses in the presidential plane (Photo: 24 Chasa)
She began her election campaign straight from chemotherapy.
In the Balkan homeland of her late father Petar Rusev (known also as Pedro Rousseff), news about Brazil has so far been limited to the Rio Carnival, football and samba. Now papers dedicate whole pages to "our kinswoman" tipped to become one of the world's most influential leaders.
And people proudly read about her extraordinary path in life.
Pedro Rousseff, who died in 1962, emigrated from his native town of Gabrovo in central Bulgaria to France in 1929.
Later he settled in Belo Horizonte, south eastern Brazil, where he became a rancher and married Dilma Jane Silva, Ms Rousseff's mother.
Just finished boarding school, French and piano lessons, 17-year old Ms Rousseff headed a guerrilla group fighting Brazil's 1964-1985 military junta.
She led men who stole $2.5 million from the office of the Sao Paolo Governor in 1969.
She then served a prison sentence from 1970 to 1973 and was repeatedly tortured.
Once out of jail, she graduated in economics and, after the restoration of democracy in the mid-1980s, helped re-establish the Workers' Party of current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva where she rose to become his chief of staff.
Mr Lula, the most popular Brazilian leader ever, is not allowed to run for a third term. He threw all his weight behind Ms Rousseff voicing confidence she would continue his pragmatic economic policies that fostered growth and delivered aid to low income groups.
Pollsters give Ms Rousseff 51 percent of the vote compared to just over 25 percent for her main contender Sao Paolo governor Jose Serra, who lost the 2002 presidential polls to Mr Lula.
If she wins, she will be the third consecutive female state leader over recent years in Latin America where politics is predominantly a male world. Ms Rousseff will follow in the footsteps of Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her former colleague from Chile, Michele Bachelet.
Although she speaks no Bulgarian, Ms Rouseff's Bulgarian background became a colourful detail in the Brazilian media coverage of her campaign. In an interview for the SBT TV she sent her love to all Bulgarians. "I had a brother who lived in Bulgaria," said Ms Rousseff referring to Lyuben Rousseff. "He died recently. I'm sorry, I have no other relatives in Bulgaria."
However, the Sofia daily, Trud, proved her wrong. Its reporters found Mr Rousseff's nephew Bozhidar Baikushev, who said he would be proud to see his distant relative elected president of Brazil.
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