Confident of reelection, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva refused to debate with his rivals, opting instead to close his campaign in his leftist party's stronghold.
To rousing cheers from thou-sands of supporters, Lula recalled how he rose from poverty to the presidency and outlined his government's successes in battling poverty.
"I have arrived there," Lula, 60, said late on Thursday in reference to the presidency speaking to a crowd in San Bernardo do Campo, an industrial area on the outskirts of Sao Paulo where he got his first job as a metal worker at age 14, "but I never left you."
PHOTO: AFP
"In all humility, I say that if everything goes the way it should, we will win the election on Sunday," he said as his main but distant rival Geraldo Alckmin and two longshot candidates took part in a televised debate in Rio de Janeiro, hundreds of kilometers away.
Alckmin, a former governor of Sao Paulo state, lashed out at the frontrunner, claiming Lula steered clear of the debate for fear of being taken to task over a series of scandals implicating some of his top aides.
"He should explain the scandals that surround his government," said Alckmin, who lags 20 points behind Lula's 53 percent in the latest opinion polls.
An experienced politician with a reputation for solid managerial skills, Alckmin lacks Lula's charisma and oratorial skills.
The president had kept his rival guessing until the last minute whether he would attend the debate or not.
He eventually issued a statement saying he refused to appear in "an arena of insults and aggressions, a game of marked cards."
At the electoral rally, he simply said it was of utmost importance for him to close his campaign "in the land of my political birth."
Listing the achievements of his government, Lula told the crowd poverty had dropped by more than 19 percent in Brazil since he assumed office, while investments were the highest in a decade, and foreign exports had reached an all-time high.
"He's somebody who emerged from the people, who suffered from hunger like all of us, and who today battles for a better country," said Emerseon Abreu Santana, a 32-year-old salesman, sporting a T-shirt with the emblem of Lula's Workers Party, a white star on a red background.
A one-time shoeshine boy with little formal education, Lula draws support from the millions of impoverished Brazilians, who identify with his humble background.
His backing is in large part attributed to a program that hands out cash subsidies to 11 million needy families, but also to the government's successes in slashing inflation and creating new jobs.
Lula dropped his once fiery leftist rhetoric after his 2002 election, maintaining orthodox economic policies and steering well clear of the type of virulent anti-US discourse cherished by President Hugo Chavez of neighboring Venezuela.
His popularity has survived a series of scandals which implicated senior officials in his government and party.
Lula has insisted he had no knowledge of the affairs until they came to light, and fired several of his close aides.
In the latest scandal, two Workers Party officials were arrested in mid-September with almost US$800,000 in cash they allegedly planned to use to buy documents that allegedly could tie Alckmin to a corrupt business deal.
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