Green Party Watch

The Associated Press is reporting that Brazilian environmentalist and former Presidential candidate Marina Silva has left the Green Party. From the San Francisco Examiner:

Silva won a surprising 20 percent of the vote in the first round of last year’s presidential election in Brazil. Her candidacy rallied interest in the nation’s Green Party.
But she’s had differences with party leaders over the direction of the party, and says it has lost the “political vision” she would like it to have.
In 2009, Silva left the governing Workers Party, which she had helped found three decades earlier. She bolted after being ousted as environmental minister.
It is widely expected Silva will run for the presidency in 2014. But her announcement Thursday gives no hint of her political plans.

Meanwhile in Germany, police found pot plants growing in flower boxes at the Green Party office in Thuringia. From Business Insider:

The police are investigating the Green party office for drug law violations, though the initial defense given was that the plants were grown for “producing hemp”.

The Christian Democrats in the region have jumped on this as a chance to criticize the Greens.

Wolfgang Fielder, a Christian Democrat state member of parliament told the newspaper Thüringische Landeszeitung that any Green party member who participated in or knew about the cannabis-growing “must resign their high parliamentary office.”

When asked how the cannabis got to the Green party office, a party spokesman, Daniela Hoffman Weber claimed ignorance and said “that would interest us.”

She added that, “no one will seriously believe that we’re making hemp here.”

Amazon rainforest defender and Green Party presidential candidate Marina Silva earned over 19% of the vote in Brazil’s first round of presidential elections, reports the Washington Post:

With 99.8 percent of the votes counted late in the evening, Dilma Rousseff, 62, a Marxist guerrilla-turned-economist who served Lula as chief of staff, had nearly 47 percent, to 32.6 percent for Jose Serra, a former governor who is her main challenger. A third candidate, Marina Silva, the Green Party candidate and a former environmental minister in Lula’s government, had 19.3 percent. Polls and political analysts suggest that Rousseff will be Brazil’s next president, but she did not get the more than 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff with Serra on Oct. 31.

Bloomberg reports that Brazilian Green Party presidential candidate Marina Silva has risen to 14% in polls, while the popular ruling party’s candidate has dropped below 50%, making it more likely that the Oct. 3rd election will result in a runoff. As a longtime activist and former minister of the environment, Silva has earned worldwide recognition for her efforts to protect the Amazon rainforest. Read more Marina Silva coverage from Green Party Watch.

Reuters reports from Brazil:

Former rubber tapper turned environmentalist Marina Silva joined Brazil’s presidential race as candidate for the small Green Party on Sunday, pledging clean government and sustainable development. read more »

“With the opportunity to try to construct this new future for Brazil and for the planet, I prefer to put my hopes in this movement.”

Marina Silva

The Green Party of Brazil has a new voice, Senator Marina Silva. Female, black, born in the heart of the Amazon, and analphabetic until the age of 16, Marina is the heir of Chico Mendes in the struggle to preserve the forest. read more »

In looking over email messages I came across one sent out in late September. It addresses Marina Silva’s possible presidential run in Brazil. Silva is an internationally known activist for the Amazon, and the people who live there. She recently joined the Brazilian Green Party.

Marina Silva, the charismatic rubber tapper who went on to become senator and Environment Minister, is weighing a presidential bid in Brazil´s 2010 election, according to multiple reports. Political observers say that while her chances are long, Silva´s entrance and focus on the environment could spur interest among Brazilians disenchanted by the Workers´ Party, the dominant part which has been tarnished lately by corruption scandals. read more »

In a piece at Reuters, covers the upcoming presidential race in Brazil, where current president Lula de Silva is prevented from running for re-election by term limits. There are many candidates covered, including hopeful Green Party nominee Marina Silva.

Marina Silva, environment minister in the Lula administration until May 2008 and an internationally renowned defender of the Amazon rain forest. She is considering running for the Green Party but is less well known at home. She has 8 percent support in opinion polls.

Brazilian author Paulo Coelho is reportedly considering a run for the Brazilian legislature with the Green Party there. This follows close on the heals of a decision by Marina Silva, a prominent environmentalist activist and former Environment Minister, to join the Green Party.

Paulo Coelho is also the author of The Alchemist, the most translated book by a living writer.

In a statement received by Green Party Watch, the Partido Verde, the Brazilian Green Party, announced that Senator Marina Silva has joined the party. More than a thousand Brazilian Greens were at a national meeting in Sao Paulo when she announced that she was joining the Green Party.

Silva had served as Environment Minister in President Lula da Silva’s cabinet. Being broadly encouraged to join the Partido Verde, Silva said that she would make no decisions on a possible presidential run of her own until 2010.

The full text of the announcement is below the fold.

read more »

Former Brazilian Environment Minister and life long defender of the Amazon Marina Silva has responded to the outpouring of petitions for her to run for President by taking the next step – joining the Green Party of Brazil. While she has not announced that she is a candidate for the Presidency, she hinted at it

From Reuters:

SAO PAULO, Aug 30 (Reuters) – Brazil’s former environment minister Marina Silva took another big step on Sunday toward an expected presidential bid by joining the Green Party, which wants to field her in the 2010 race.

Silva, an internationally renowned defender of the Amazon, shook up Brazil’s political landscape last month when she said she may run for the country’s top job.

“I feel honored with the invitation to run for the presidency and that people embraced the idea,” Silva told party leaders and supporters in Sao Paulo.

“But we’ll take that decision only in 2010,” she said, amid chants of “Marina for President”.
read more »

The Green Party of Brazil is asking Greens around the globe to write letters urging Marina Silva, former environmental minister and potential presidential candidate, to join the Global Green family. A native Amazonian, union organizer and globally-recognized protector of the Amazon rainforest, Marina Silva’s many honors include being named a “Champion of the Earth” by the United Nations Environment Program. According to the Brazilian Greens, they have met with Silva and she is “very interested” in their proposal.

So far, Green Party representatives have written to Marina Silva from Austria, Israel, Sri Lanka, Japan, Morocco, the African Greens Movement, the European Greens, the GPUS International Committee, Argentina, Norway, Spain, Germany, Minnesota, and the UK. For more information and instructions on how to send a letter to Marina Silva, go to the following website:

http://letsgomarina.blogspot.com/

read more »

Spiegel Online reports on the growth of the Green Party in Germany at the expense of the Social Democrats. According to Spiegel, the Greens and Social Democrats are struggling for the “New Center” in German politics. In a quote that could apply to some US cities, Spiegel writes

In many major cities, it has already risen to become the second-biggest political party.

The article also covers the German Green Party’s efforts to connect with voters via their own Internet radio station.

In what may be the most telling quote, a German voter addresses the current financial problems, and the traditional party approach.

“There’s not so much money left, so it needs to be spent intelligently,” says Katharina Blumenstock, a gynecologist in Cologne. “The development of electric cars is more important to me than the Opel bailout. We need to invest in the future.” She says she trust the Greens most to find the right path out of the current financial and economic crisis.

Much more, from New Zealand, Ireland, Argentina, Belgium, Scotland, Palestine, and many more can be found by clicking this article’s headline.
read more »