Brazil has a new president!

Read the forum code of contact

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 331

EARLY RESULTS : BRAZILIAN LEFTIST LEADING PRESIDENTIAL VOTE

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- Former union boss Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took a commanding lead in Brazil's presidential election Sunday, partial results showed, signaling a win that would mark a historic shift to the left for Latin America's largest country.

Minutes after polls closed, thousands of Silva supporters gathered in the streets of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, waving his party's red flag in celebration.

"This is our opportunity to consolidate our hopes for a Brazil which should be more just, and care more about the needs of the people," said Marcos Xavier, a university professor who stood amid some 1,000 Silva supporters on Sao Paulo's main avenue.

With 55 percent of the vote counted, Silva -- a former shoeshine boy who rose to become the boss of a labor union -- had 61 percent support and government-backed candidate Jose Serra had 39 percent, the government electoral commission announced.

Silva, popularly known as "Lula," just missed a victory in the first-round election on Oct. 6, forcing a runoff against Serra.

Silva, who has promised to narrow the vast chasm between rich and poor, would be the first leftist leader elected in Brazil. Its last leftist leader was Joao Goulart, a vice president who assumed power in 1961 when the centrist president resigned. Goulart served 21/2 years and was deposed by a right-wing military coup.

From remote Indian communities in the Amazon jungle to polling stations along Rio de Janeiro's famous beaches, Brazilians went to the polls to vote on electronic machines.

Tens of thousands of soldiers and police moved into Brazil's main cities to provide security. In Rio de Janeiro, security forces backed by armored personnel carriers patrolled main avenues.

Brazilians are caught between hopes that Silva will reverse rising unemployment and economic stagnation, and fears that the former radical union leader could worsen the country's economic woes.

Silva's fiery rhetoric had scared business leaders. Moving to ease those fears before the election, Silva pledged to honor Brazil's foreign debt and not move to radically change the economy.

"Lula is the only who can bring about the changes that the country needs to reduce unemployment and improve the standard of living of the people," said Eloisa Marques, 38, laid off earlier this year from a drug store.

But standing next to Marques in a voting line in an industrial suburb of Sao Paulo, Waldir Conde said he preferred the ruling party's candidate, former Health Minister Jose Serra.

"Lula doesn't have experience to govern," Conde said. "To rule a country like ours, which is dominated by the United States, it is necessary to have a lot of experience and a firm hand. Serra showed he has that."

Brazil's next president will have to pull the world's ninth-biggest economy from the brink of recession, create more jobs and try to lift nearly 50 million Brazilians from poverty.

As he voted in a school in a working class neighborhood of Sao Paulo, Silva spoke of those Brazilians, and the millions of others who live a hand-to-mouth existence.

"I want to dedicate this election to the suffering poor of our beloved Brazil," Silva said as some 200 supporters outside waved Brazilian flags and small plastic banners with the slogan "Now it is Lula."

Despite a 36 percent showing in the most recent pre-election poll, Serra appeared upbeat as he voted in a fashionable neighborhood of Sao Paulo, a city of 16 million.

"I am confident," Serra said. "We believe that today, we are going to surge ahead at the moment of voting ... The result comes not from the polls but from the voting machines."

But Silva hopes to celebrate his 57th birthday, which falls on election day, with a victory, capping his rise from the son of a poor farmer to leader of Latin America's biggest and most populous nation.

He left school after the fifth grade to sell peanuts and shine shoes on the outskirts of Sao Paulo. At 14, he began working in a factory, where he lost his left pinkie finger in a machine press.

In a Sao Paulo slum, or favela, pro-Silva sentiment was prevalent.

"He was the only one -- as a metalworker union leader -- who helped the poor," said Nelson Luiz da Silva Pelotti, a 56-year-old retired metalworker.

But even in an area that is a base of support for Silva, his radical past haunted him. %

Original post