The presidential election in October has not lost its potential to surprise. Just as few had foreseen the opinion-poll surge that had made Roseana Sarney of the conservative Liberal Front Party (PFL) look a winner, so nobody had predicted that she would stumble so spectacularly. Earlier this month, police raided the office of Lu-nus, a consultancy business owned by Ms Sarney and her husband Jorge Murad, and found 1.3m reais ($570,000) in bundles of banknotes. With no clear answers as to the money's origins, the damage to Ms Sarney's candidacy has been immediate, and perhaps fatal.
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