The measure of Marina

LESS than a month ago, Marina Silva was a vice-presidential candidate on a campaign heading for defeat in the first round of Brazil’s election on October 5th. It now looks increasingly possible that she will end up as the country’s leader. The tragic death in a plane crash of Eduardo Campos, the first choice of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), sprang his running-mate to the top of the ticket. She is running neck-and-neck in the polls with Dilma Rousseff, the incumbent, and stealing support away from Aécio Neves, a centrist candidate who had looked like Ms Rousseff’s biggest rival (see article). Even if Ms Silva’s surge falters, she is poised to make it to the second round of voting, which she is predicted to win.

Ms Silva is no novice. She was a founder of the Workers’ Party (PT) that Ms Rousseff now heads, an environment minister in the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and came third in the 2010 presidential race. She appeals to the poor, from whose ranks she came; to the markets, which like her orthodox economic platform; and to ordinary Brazilians, who have a deep-seated desire for political change after two decades of rule by the PT and, before it, Mr Neves’s Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB). But if Ms Silva were to win the presidency of the world’s fifth-most-populous country and its seventh-largest economy, she would do so after only a few weeks of campaigning. That argues for extra scrutiny now.