This week a lacklustre domestic season was drawing to a tarnished close, as lawyers for Vasco da Gama, a Rio de Janeiro club, battled to bend the rules to ensure that Edmundo, their temperamental striker, could play in the second leg of the league-championship final, despite having been sent off in the first game on December 14th.

ECONOMIST: Brazil

In March last year, Mr da Silva and his allies pushed through a change in the party's rules, so that the executive committee would be chosen by all members rather than by activists.

ECONOMIST: Brazil's presidential election