Dilma is turning Patrus into her Fernando Haddad.

Minas 247 - The Workers' Party (PT) candidate for mayor of Belo Horizonte, former minister Patrus Ananias, has a high-profile campaign manager. President Dilma Rousseff has thrown herself into the political maneuvering in favor of her candidate in the city where she was born. It was Dilma who ordered the campaign to heavily support Patrus, with whom she was a colleague in Lula's cabinet. She also directed the breaking off dialogue with the PSB party of Mayor Marcio Lacerda – who is seeking re-election – after the socialists decided not to meet the PT's demands and opted to yield to the requests of Senator Aécio Neves (PSDB). Dilma has made Patrus's candidacy what Lula did with Fernando Haddad's in São Paulo. In the São Paulo election, the priority is to defeat José Serra, the perennial PSDB presidential candidate; in the Minas Gerais capital, defeating Lacerda means, for Dilma and the PT, overcoming Aécio Neves, currently the party's most likely opponent in 2014.

Dilma knows that the election in the capital of Minas Gerais has become an all-or-nothing game, or almost. If she wins in Belo Horizonte with Patrus, she will have inflicted a defeat on Aécio from which he will hardly recover. Or, at least, he won't have time to be a strong presidential candidate in 2014, against Dilma herself. If the PT loses, on the other hand, it will be out of the Belo Horizonte mayoral race for the first time in 20 years and will greatly strengthen Aécio's candidacy.

It was no coincidence, therefore, that the final push to convince the PMDB candidate for mayor of Belo Horizonte, Leonardo Quintão, to withdraw and support Patrus came from the president. Dilma called Quintão late at night and promised Michel Temer (her vice-president and national PMDB leader) a new ministry for the party. She also called the founder and national president of the PSD, the mayor of São Paulo, Gilberto Kassab, for a conversation. Kassab did his part of the agreement with Dilma and brought his party's municipal directorate in line in Belo Horizonte, but he couldn't prevent the local split: currently, the PSD supports both main candidates, and the issue will only be resolved in court.

Dilma's latest move was to convince advertising executive João Santana to participate in Patrus's campaign. Santana, who was the marketing strategist for Dilma's 2010 campaign, would be the ideal name to give the "political" tone that the PT wants to give to the campaign in the capital of Minas Gerais. The idea is to identify Lacerda with conservative forces and Patrus with the "left." The premise is that the average Belo Horizonte voter belongs to the progressive middle class, more inclined to vote for the so-called "left." The vote in the last election, when Marina Silva (PV) won the first round, is identified by the PT's marketing strategists as a sign of this.

There are two other reasons that led Dilma to confront the election in Belo Horizonte head-on. She wants to inflict a defeat on her "ally" Eduardo Campos, governor of Pernambuco and the main leader of the PSB. Dilma hasn't yet gotten over what the socialists did in Recife, where the national PT intervened to launch Senator Humberto Costa as a candidate – also fulfilling a request from Campos, who didn't want the re-election of the PT member João da Costa (elected at the municipal convention) – but, even so, their main opponent will be a PSB candidate (Geraldo Júlio).

Furthermore, there's the Fernando Pimentel factor. A long-time friend of her Minister of Development, Dilma knows that a defeat in Belo Horizonte will be largely attributed to Pimentel. He was the mastermind and main defender of the alliance that put Lacerda in the mayor's office of the Minas Gerais capital. It's no coincidence that the minister, although weakened by the break, resumed his campaign within the PT and made "peace" with Patrus. The order now is to march united for the election of Lula's former minister. And this is an order from President Dilma, which is no small thing...