President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday that he had no prior knowledge of an alleged dirty-tricks campaign against the party of his rival in the Oct. 29 runoff presidential elections -- a scandal widely believed to have cost the incumbent a first round victory.
The so-called "dossier scandal" broke weeks before the election's first round on Oct.1, with allegations that Silva's Workers' Party tried to pay the equivalent of $770,000 for evidence linking Sao Paulo gubernatorial candidate Jose Serra, of the Social Democratic Party, to graft when he was health minister from 1998 to 2002.
"I want to know who the architect of this act of stupidity was," Silva said Monday. "The Federal Police have orders to leave no stone unturned. It could take a day, a month or a year, but we will discover who hatched this plan." Silva made his remarks during the taping of "Roda Viva," a weekly interview program aired by Sao Paulo's TV Cultura.
The program was scheduled to be broadcast Monday night. The scandal forced Silva to fire his campaign manager, Ricardo Berzoini, who days later stepped down as president of the Workers' Party. Voter outrage may have cost Silva a first-round victory in his bid for re-election and forced him into the runoff against the Social Democratic Party's presidential candidate, former Sao Paulo State Gov.
Geraldo Alckmin. Silva took 48.6 percent of the first-round vote, just short of the outright majority needed to avoid the runoff. Alckmin got about 42 percent.
