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To: maceng2 who wrote (23980)	10/7/2002 1:39:11 AM
From: maceng2	Respond to of 74559

Da Silva surges ahead in Brazilian poll By Raymond Colitt and Richard Lapper in São Paulo Published: October 7 2002 1:34 \| Last Updated: October 7 2002 1:34 [Note: Brazil has an advanced electronic voting system. It is an actual democracy...pb] Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the leftwing Workers' Party on Sunday appeared to have failed to gain the absolute majority needed to avoid a second-round run-off with rival candidates in Brazil's presidential election. Brazil votes By late evening, with 76 per cent of the votes counted, Mr da Silva was thought to have won 47 per cent of the vote, short of the 50 per cent needed to avoid a second poll on October 27. José Serra, the government candidate, obtained 24 per cent. If confirmed, the two would face each other in a run-off election on October 27. Most of the votes were to have been tallied by midnight local time. About 115m Brazilians were registered to vote and some 18 per cent were expected to abstain. Anthony Garotinho and Ciro Gomes, the former governors of Rio de Janeiro and Ceara state, respectively, obtained 17 and 13 per cent of the vote. Mr da Silva, a former trade unionist who helped found the Workers' Party 22 years ago, has lost three presidential elections. If he emerges as president he will need to build an alliance with parties to the right, since the PT is unlikely to win more than 80 of the 508 seats in the lower house of congress. During the election campaign, Mr da Silva moved his party towards the centre, moderating many of his more radical economic views. Candidates of the Workers' Party (PT) in state and congressional elections also performed better than expected, according to preliminary official results. José Genoino, who had been trailing a distant third in pre-election polls in the São Paulo gubernatorial race, looked set to force a run-off against the government candidate. The country's first all-electronic election had taken place without serious setbacks. Around 1 per cent of the 406,000 computerised polling machines had to be replaced by back-up machines due to technical difficulties but only 325 of more than 310,000 voting stations needed to revert to using paper ballots. Brazil's electronic system involves complex voting procedures - voters needed to hit 25 separate keys. Voters keyed in the number 13 for Mr da Silva and number 45 for Mr Serra, for example. In Rio de Janeiro, thousands of troops and police protected ballot boxes after clashes last week between rival drug gangs. Soldiers were also deployed in dozens of smaller towns. Yet there were no reports of violence. Elsewhere, there were isolated reports of attempted fraud in remote rural areas and several campaign workers were arrested for trying to buy votes or for harassing electors. Although Brazil returned to democracy as recently as 1985, its independent electoral institutions were set up in the 1930s and are generally regarded as efficient and fair. For more than half a century national electoral fraud has not been a serious problem, said Amaury de Souza, a Rio de Janeiro-based political analyst. With a population of 172m, Brazil is the world's fourth-largest democracy and eleventh-largest economy.