BRAZIL: Brazilians went to the polls yesterday to elect a new president with leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva expected to win huge backing. Initial exit polls last night suggested Lula had won 63 per cent of the vote.
He has pledged to lead Latin America's largest nation into a new era of greater social justice, less violence and more jobs.
Voters streamed out of plush mansions and grimy slums to the polls with many hoping the former metal worker could break a vicious cycle of poverty and crime that transcends gaping class divisions in a country of 170 million.
On his 57th birthday, Lula, a former shoeshine boy and factory worker, was poised to become Brazil's first working-class leader after a 13-year struggle for the presidency and a recent shift to the political centre.
"This is the happiest moment of my life," said Lula as he voted in the working class neighbourhood of Sao Paulo, where he led a union movement 22 years ago that planted the seed for his left-wing Workers' Party. "I want to dedicate this election to the suffering people of our beloved Brazil," he said, sporting a lapel badge of his party's red star symbol.
Recent polls showed Lula was likely to beat by a wide margin his rival Jose Serra, the candidate backed by outgoing President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
While President Cardoso choked off hyperinflation and brought bumper investment, unemployment is at its highest level since early 2000, real wages are falling and Brazil is in the throes of a chronic financial crisis that has crippled its currency.
Brazil also has the world's second highest murder rate, after war-torn Colombia, fuelled by urban warfare between drug gangs and rampant crime.
Lula tapped into those voters' frustrations and is now set to become the first elected leftist leader of the world's fourth most populous democracy.
The election and the government transition in January would be a showcase of Brazil's young democracy in what is only its fourth election since the end of its 1964-1985 military rule.
Lula narrowly missed out on a first-round victory on October 6th, sending 115 million voters back to the ballot boxes.
Since then, Lula fever seems to have spread. "I don't feel Serra understands my needs, Lula knows what life is like, he has been poor," said Maria Santos (32), who works as a maid.
If victory is confirmed for the four-time candidate, the bearded, burly Lula will have to confront $260 billion in delicately balanced public debt, sky-high interest rates, snail-paced growth and one of the largest income distribution gaps in the world.
About 10 per cent of the population controls 50 per cent of its wealth, much of which sprouts from the vast agricultural and mineral resources of a landmass larger than the United States.
Financial investors had doubted Lula's ability to steer the world's ninth largest economy through turbulent times and many questioned the impact of his election on trade negotiations in the Americas and with Europe.
But in the face of the expected landslide victory, investors have warmed to Lula and many local business barons now believe he can strike what his party called a "social pact" uniting workers, intellectuals and the elite to resolve Brazil's ills.
Some doubts remain, however, that the firebrand who in the past derided the economic policies he now pledges to pursue is up to the delicate balancing act of addressing social needs while revenues are shrinking.
Lula has swapped his jeans for sharp suits and pledged to follow the controlled spending laid out in Brazil's $30.4 billion loan with the International Monetary Fund. But in the past he talked of debt renegotiation and criticised many of President Cardoso's free-market policies. "It feels very strange that so many people are supporting Lula and I don't, but I am really afraid that inflation will return," said Joao Garcia de Carvalho, 41, who is a paramedic. - (Reuters)