The frontrunner in the presidential race is fighting a claim by Christian groups that she will lift the country’s abortion ban

AFTER MONTHS of lukewarm campaigning by two uninspiring frontrunners, the political temperature is rising in Brazil’s presidential election ahead of Sunday’s climax, sparked by an increasingly nasty debate over the country’s ban on abortion.

After falling just short of victory in a first round of polling, frontrunner Dilma Rousseff of the ruling Workers Party has suddenly found herself having to fight off an orchestrated campaign by Christian groups that she is a militant atheist determined to lift the ban.

Abortion emerged as a major campaign issue after evangelical groups mounted an internet campaign calling on followers to vote for Green candidate Marina Silva, herself an evangelical opposed to abortion.

Her surprise third-place showing with 20 per cent of the vote in the October 3rd first round is widely seen as having robbed Ms Rousseff of outright victory.

Ahead of the vote, evangelical groups circulated videos on-line of pastors denouncing the former Marxist guerrilla over her past support for liberalising the law which only allows women to terminate pregnancies in cases of rape or risk to the health of the mother. Now ahead of the run-off round the main opposition candidate, Social Democrat José Serra, has sought to use the religious card in his effort to make up the 14 points by which he trailed Ms Rousseff in the first round.

Himself a former student radical and a left-wing economist and not previously known for his religious convictions, Mr Serra has taken to prominently attending Mass on the campaign trail, kissing a crucifix before the media and telling voters “I want to defend the Brazilian family”. Polls show over 70 per cent of Brazilians support the abortion ban, even though it is estimated that one-in-five women have had an illegal abortion and around 300 die each year from botched procedures in backstreet clinics.

When polls showed Mr Serra eating into her lead, Ms Rousseff sought to counter claims that she is out of step with what remains a religious society by herself attending Mass and claiming a brush last year with cancer brought her back “closer to God”. Asked why she did not receive communion she angrily told journalists that no-one had the right to question her religious convictions.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the hugely popular outgoing president whose backing is crucial to Ms Rousseff’s chances, ordered his protégée to abandon her previous stance favouring a liberalisation of the ban. Ms Rousseff subsequently published a letter to voters saying she was “personally against abortion and defend keeping the current legislation as it is”.

“The second round is a direct confrontation between the two main political forces in the country so a stronger tone is expected. But the emergence of abortion as an issue has been surprising especially as it is not even within the president’s remit as only congress can make any changes to this law. The problem is abortion has overshadowed other important issues and the level of debate has been very poor in the second round,” says André Pereira César of the CAC political consultancy in Brasília.

Latest polls show president Lula’s containment strategy working with Ms Rousseff’s support among Christian groups rising again and her overall lead back in double figures.

This leaves Mr Serra with a mountain to climb as the campaign enters its final stretch. The abortion debate has poisoned the political climate with both sides now hurling increasingly personal accusations at each other. Two former ballet students of Mr Serra’s Chilean wife claimed she told them in 1992 that the couple had an abortion when Mr Serra was in exile in Chile, claims that have being widely circulated online by Ms Rousseff’s supporters. Earlier in the campaign Ms Serra called her husband’s opponent a “baby killer”.

Mr Serra’s campaign dismissed the accusations about his wife as dirty tricks and he compared his opponents to Nazis after he was jostled by Workers Party militants during a walk-about in Rio de Janeiro. He claimed they struck him on the head during the confrontation which forced him to take refuge in a local pharmacy.

The Workers Party released a video which it claimed showed Mr Serra was struck by nothing more than a ball of paper with president Lula accusing the opposition candidate of “lies” in order to drum up a new controversy. But Brazilian media said the Workers Party had doctored the video, cutting out the moment Mr Serra was struck by a second object.

Adding to the increasingly acrid tone is an ongoing stream of accusations and counter accusations of corruption and spying by both sides with the media uncovering new cases of influence peddling and kickbacks both by a former aide to Ms Rousseff in the federal government and by a former Serra appointee in the state government of São Paulo.