SAO PAULO, May 7 (UPI) -- Brazil's Liberal Front Party on Tuesday called for the country's ruling-party presidential candidate to end his campaign amid allegations that implicate Jose Serra in a request for kickbacks totaling more than $6 million during the mid-1990s.
In a written statement signed by Jorge Bornhausen, national chairman of the Liberal Front, known locally as the PFL, the party says it will consider realigning itself with the ruling coalition if the Social Democratic Party, or PSDB, drops Serra.
Following talks with PSDB party leaders and other elected officials, Bornhausen said the "decision to step down is ultimately Serra's," although ending his presidential bid would prove the PSDB candidate's merit, according to the PFL statement released Tuesday.
The PFL and PSDB -- along with the influential Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB and the Progressive Party -- formed the country's ruling coalition for more than seven years until corruption allegations forced the PFL's candidate, former Maranhao state Gov. Roseana Sarney, to end her own presidential bid.
Sarney accused the PSDB of attempting to sabotage her campaign, leading to the March 7 breakup of the coalition. Sarney had been accused of misappropriating more than $20 million dollars slated for development in her state a week earlier.
Some PFL members are convinced Serra was behind the investigation of Sarney and see his disgrace and subsequent end to his presidential bid as a mollifying, tit-for-tat move.
The statement went on to stress the need for the coalition to endorse a candidate that could win the presidency, and alluded that Serra was not the man for the job.
"The candidate (representing the coalition) should exemplify the best conditions for victory," said Bornhausen, who also cited Workers Party candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's 20-point lead over Serra in the latest polls.
The handpicked successor of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and his former health minister, Serra was implicated in financial misdeeds in a report published over the weekend by Brazil's leading weekly magazine Veja.
The article claimed Ricardo Sergio de Oliveira -- Serra's former campaign treasurer -- asked the chairman of Brazil's second largest steel company for kickbacks totaling $6.2 million before the 1997 Siderurgica Nacional takeover of state iron-ore producer Vale do Rio Doce.
In return, Siderurgica Chairman Benjamin Steinbruch reportedly was offered access to finances from the government-controlled employee pension fund.
The allegations were leveled by former Communications Minister Luiz Carlos Mendonca de Barros and current Education Minister Paulo Renato, reported Veja. Both men are members of the PSDB.
Dismissing the allegations as "frivolous and false," Serra went on to condemn the article's accusations as a ploy to discredit his candidacy, Brazilian newspapers reported Monday.
"This whole story is crazy, it's a huge electoral setup," Serra told Brazilian media following the release of the report.
While PSDB leaders have maintained their public support for Serra, some PMDB members have backed off from previous endorsements, making clear the distinction between the man and the political coalition and saying they want to move away from making obligatory their endorsement of Serra.
"Serra has our sympathy ... but this question of who should be the candidate, it is for the PSDB to decide," said Michel Temer, PMDB president and representative in Brazil's lower house of Congress.
