Brazil's environment icon in presidential poll dilemma Brazil netial electipopular opposition figure faces deadline for presidenti

The political future of former Brazilian presidential candidate Marina Silva was unclear Friday after she failed to gather enough signatures to register her new party for next year's elections. Silva, who won nearly 20 million votes in the first round of the 2010 poll, now has until Saturday to choose a different party affiliation if she wants to enter next October's presidential race. On Thursday, the country's electoral court ruled 6-1 that Silva had failed to collect enough signatures to register her new party, Sustainability Network, in time for the 2014 election. The former Senator bullishly insisted that the court ruling did not represent "a defeat" in a post on Twitter. Opinion polls have consistently put Silva, who served as environment minister for five years from 2003 under then president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as the strongest opposition rival to President Dilma Rousseff in next year's election. She is the only candidate who has been on an ascending curve in the presidential polls, even during the massive street protests that rocked the country in June. One of the parties which could welcome the 55-year-old politician is the recently created National Ecological Party PEN. "Friday, we will have a meeting with representatives of Marina Silva. We have offered her our structure. We back sustainable development and we are not a traditional party," said PEN chief Adilson Barroso. The deadline for securing a party affiliation expires Saturday, a year before the October 5 presidential polls.