Brasilia - Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff said Wednesday she will seek re-election in October, even though some are calling for the return of her popular predecessor president Luiz Inacio Lula.
Rousseff, who belongs to Lula's Workers Party and was his protegee, said she hoped to have the support of all the parties allied with her government.
“But if this support doesn't exist, we will still go forward,” she said in an interview with local radio stations in the northeast.
Lawmakers from the Party of the Republic, which is part of the ruling coalition, said Monday they wanted to see the popular Lula return as a candidate in the October elections.
Rousseff, however, said she was paying no attention to them and that her priority was “to govern this country.”
The “Lula Return” movement coincides with a sharp drop in Rousseff's popularity, even though polls still show her leading the field of potential candidates.
A poll released Tuesday found 37 percent would vote for her, compared to 21.6 percent for social democrat Aecio Neves and 11.8
percent for socialist Eduardo Campos.
Since leaving office in 2010 after two consecutive terms as president, Lula has said several times that he will not run again.
In a recent interview with Portugal's RTP TV, he said he planned to work for Rousseff's re-election.
“Dilma will win the elections,” he said.
Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla who was plucked from obscurity by Lula to become his chief of staff, is Brazil's first female president.
Sapa-AFP