After the most contentious election race since the end of military rule in 1985, Brazilians were choosing their next president yesterday, weighing a decade of social progress against a yearning for economic revival.
Final opinion polls on Saturday showed leftist Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff a narrow favorite with a four to six-point advantage over center-right Aecio Neves in the race to lead the world’s seventh-largest economy.
A former guerrilla jailed and tortured for fighting the country’s 1964 to 1985 military regime, Rousseff — Brazil’s first woman president — has needed all her battling qualities to claw back the advantage on Neves, the choice of the business world.
Photo: AFP
Yesterday’s vote was widely seen as a referendum on 12 years of government by her Workers’ Party (PT) — eight under former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and four under Rousseff, who has presided over anemic growth culminating in recession.
The PT has endeared itself to the masses, though, particularly in the impoverished north, with landmark social programs that have lifted 40 million people out of poverty, increased wages and brought unemployment to a record-low 4.9 percent, but after Brazil benefited from an economic boom during the Lula years, the outlook has darkened since Rousseff won the 2010 election, the year economic growth peaked at 7.5 percent.
Rousseff, 66, has overseen rising inflation and a recession this year. She also faced massive protests last year against corruption, record spending on the FIFA World Cup finals and poor services, notably education, healthcare and transport.
She has further been battered by a multibillion-dollar embezzlement scandal implicating dozens of politicians — mainly her allies — at state-owned oil giant Petrobras.
Right-wing news magazine Veja on Friday quoted a suspect in the case as saying Rousseff and Lula personally knew of the scam. She roundly denied the claim and threatened to sue.
Before the Oct. 5 first-round vote, Rousseff fended off environmentalist Marina Silva, who initially surged in opinion polls with her vow to become Brazil’s first “poor, black” president, having dramatically entered the race after running mate Eduardo Campos died in a plane crash.
No sooner had the PT electoral machine dispatched Silva — who exited the contest with 21 percent to Rousseff’s 42 percent and Neves’ 34 percent — than the incumbent had to beat back Neves, who opened a brief lead in opinion polls.
With the candidates fighting for every vote in the sprawling country of 202 million people, the election campaign took on a level of animosity not seen since the return to democracy.
Rousseff accused Neves of nepotism as governor of Minas Gerais state, then played up a report he once hit his then-girlfriend in public and she suggested the Social Democrat was driving “drunk or on drugs” when he refused to take a breathalyzer during a 2011 traffic stop.
Neves, a 54-year-old senator and the grandson of the man elected Brazil’s first post-dictatorship president, responded in kind, accusing Rousseff of lying, incompetent economic management and “collusion” in the Petrobras kickbacks scandal.
Polls opened at 8am and results were expected shortly after the 5pm close, thanks to a sophisticated electronic voting system.
Brazilian authorities have deployed 35,000 military police in Rio de Janeiro ahead of the run-off after a string of attacks on police and clashes between drug gangs.
Voting is compulsory in Brazil, Latin America’s largest democracy.
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