Newsmaker

Brazil's first female president Dilma Rousseff

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-01-02 09:27
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BRASILIA -- Dilma Rousseff of Brazil's Workers ' Party (PT) on Saturday took office as the largest South American country's first female president for a term of four years.

Rousseff, 63, was born in a middle class family in the state of Minas Gerais. Her parents were a Bulgarian immigrant and a Brazilian.

In her youth, Rousseff participated in the armed resistance known as Colina (an acronym for Command of National Liberation) and VAR-Palmares (Armed Revolutionary Vanguard), fighting against the de facto regime. She was imprisoned, tortured and spent three years in prison in the early 1970s.

In the late years of the military regime, Rousseff fought for amnesty for citizens who had lost their civil rights and were persecuted by the government, and participated in the founding of Democratic Labor Party (PDT) in Brazil's southern region.

Close to important Brazilian political leaders, such as Leonel Brizola, she played a decisive role in the movement called Diretas Ja (Direct elections now), the largest civil mobilization in Brazil's recent history, which culminated with the return of democracy.

After studying economics, she became in the late 1980s the Secretary of Mines and Energy of the government of Rio Grande do Sul, which made her known in the whole country.

Affiliated with Workers' Party since 2001, she was the Minister of Energy during the first term of Lula da Silva as of January 2003, and in June 2005 she assumed the post of Chief of Staff.

In that position, Rousseff was responsible for the major executive actions in Lula da Silva's second term as president. The coordination of PAC (Program to Accelerate Growth), a project to boost sanitation infrastructure, housing, transportation, energy and water resources, was among the highlights.

She also launched strategic programs such as 'My Home, My Life, ' the largest housing project in Brazilian history, with a forecast of one million new homes, and the 'Light for All,' which provided electricity to more than 11 million Brazilians in rural and peripheral areas of big cities.

During her tenure as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the state-owned oil company Petrobras, Brazil reached self-sufficiency in oil production and mega reserves were discovered in the pre- salt layer of Brazil's seabed, which may turn the South American country into a large oil exporter.

Dilma Rousseff was hand-picked by president Lula himself to run for his succession and in April this year she left the post as Chief of Staff.

She was elected president in the second round that took place on October 31, with 56.09 percent of votes against 43.9 percent for her opponent Jose Serra, from the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB).

Divorced, she has a daughter who gave birth to her first grandson last month. In 2009 Rousseff had to undergo treatment for a cancer in the lymphatic system, from which she recovered quickly.