Election campaign advertising time may include airport vs. Petrobras.

The PSDB presidential candidate is considering including in party television programs, which will air nationally starting on the 19th, allegations involving Petrobras, the target of two congressional inquiry commissions; "There is still no specific definition on the Petrobras issue. But it fits into the diagnosis of how harmful the manipulation of the public machine is to the country for the benefit of a power project, not for the country," said Aécio Neves over the weekend; on the other hand, President Dilma Rousseff, the PT candidate for re-election, is expected to bring up the construction of the airport in Cláudio (MG), near land owned by the PSDB candidate's family.

August 12, 2014, 20:10 PMUpdated July 11, 2018, 06:53 pm

The PSDB presidential candidate is considering including in party television programs, which will air nationally starting on the 19th, allegations involving Petrobras, the target of two congressional inquiry commissions; "There is still no specific definition on the Petrobras issue. But it fits into the diagnosis of how harmful the manipulation of the public machine is to the country for the benefit of a power project, not a national one," said Aécio Neves over the weekend; on the other hand, President Dilma Rousseff, the PT candidate for re-election, is expected to bring up the construction of the airport in Cláudio (MG), near land owned by the PSDB candidate's family (Photo: Gisele Federicce).

247 - The free election broadcast time, which begins airing on national radio and television starting August 19th, is expected to feature a battle of accusations between the two main candidates: President Dilma Rousseff, running for reelection with the PT party, and Senator Aécio Neves, the PSDB presidential candidate.

The PSDB candidate is considering including in his campaign programs, which have already begun recording, allegations involving Petrobras, the target of two congressional investigations. The president of the state-owned company, Graça Foster, even faced the possibility of resigning if the Federal Audit Court (TCU) decided to freeze her assets.

"There is still no specific definition on the Petrobras issue. But it fits into the diagnosis of how harmful it is to the country to use the public machine for the benefit of a power project, not for the country," said Aécio over the weekend, during a visit to Manaus (AM).

"The so-called nationalist government is the government that has most weakened our main companies. Eletrobras is bankrupt and Petrobras is in the situation it is in today," he added. The politician from the PSDB party is a fierce critic of the PT government's management of the company and frequently reinforces the discourse that he intends to "renationalize" the company.

On President Dilma's side, attacks are also expected during the election campaign period. The issue most frequently raised against the PSDB presidential candidate is the construction of an airport in the municipality of Cláudio (MG) on land that belonged to Aécio's family when he was governor of Minas Gerais.

The internal assessment within Dilma's campaign, coordinated by the president of the PT party, Rui Falcão, is that the damage to the image of the PSDB candidate from the episode was only "slight." Therefore, reelection strategists are studying a way to use the issue in free political advertising without it appearing to be a gratuitous attack.

Even before the official election campaign, the PT (Workers' Party) sought other ways to keep the issue under constant discussion, such as the lawsuit filed against the candidate for administrative misconduct and for endangering air traffic by landing on a runway not approved by the National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC). The PT will have 11 minutes of daily airtime for its election campaign.