Dilma: "Some people look at the Northeast with prejudice"

Reuters - President Dilma Rousseff (PT) held her first campaign event of the second round this Wednesday in Teresina, promising to continue the transformation that her government and that of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made in the Northeast, a region where, last Sunday, she had a large advantage over her opponent in the second round, Aécio Neves (PSDB).

"Some people look at the Northeast with prejudice and don't follow everything that's been happening here, in this region of the country," he said at an event with activists and local leaders.

"I am proud to say that we have made a transformation in the Northeast, but we know that there is still much to be done," he added. "We have a historical debt to the Northeast. Every president does."

Dilma, who is seeking re-election, began her speech by thanking voters in the region.

"I couldn't restart the campaign anywhere else. Piauí gave me the most resounding vote," she said. The president received 70,6% of the votes from Piauí residents in the first round (1,2 million votes), the highest percentage among all states.

Now, the Workers' Party candidate and the PSDB candidate are chasing after the voters of Marina Silva (PSB), who came in third place nationally but was the second most voted in the Northeast. While the president received 16,4 million votes, Aécio totaled 4,2 million and Marina, 6,3 million.

The president didn't miss the opportunity to attack the PSDB candidate, saying that when that party governed Brazil, it ignored the region.

"This elitist view of those who, when they governed the country, excluded the poor from the budget. They were people who had policies for a third of the population, unlike us," he said. "Now, my opponent is saying he's going to create the best Bolsa Família program? And why didn't they do that before?"

After the meeting in Teresina, the president would campaign in João Pessoa.

(By Vinicius Cherobino)