I wonder if the market has already priced this possible result (and the unknown consequences of it)
_____________________________________
Brazil's Lula Leads in Election
_____News From Brazil_____
• Predicted Winner in Brazil Faces Great Expectations (The Washington Post, Oct 27, 2002)
• Election Support Falls in Place for Brazilian Leftist (The Washington Post, Oct 11, 2002)
• Leftist Hopes to Capitalize On Strong Showing in Brazil (The Washington Post, Oct 8, 2002)
• Leftist Takes Big Lead In Brazil (The Washington Post, Oct 7, 2002)
• Dejected Brazilians Look to Left (The Washington Post, Oct 6, 2002)
• Complete Brazil Coverage
E-Mail This Article
Printer-Friendly Version
Subscribe to The Post
Associated Press
Sunday, October 27, 2002; 5:15 PM
SAO PAULO, Brazil - Former union boss Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took a commanding lead in Brazil's presidential election Sunday, early official results showed, signaling a victory that would mark a historic shift to the left for Latin America's largest country.
Silva, of the leftist Workers Party, had 58 percent of the vote with nearly 28 percent of the ballots counted, the federal electoral court said. Jose Serra, the government candidate, had 42 percent.
An exit poll showed that Silva, known popularly as "Lula," garnered 63 percent of the ballot, compared with 37 percent for Serra. Pollsters Ibope questioned 52,170 voters and gave the margin of error as 2 percentage points.
Silva just missed a victory in the first-round election on Oct. 6, forcing a runoff against Serra.
Brazil has never elected a leftist president. Its last leftist leader was Joao Goulart, a vice president who assumed power in 1961 when the centrist president resigned. Goulart served a little over two 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 for the second-round presidential election. 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.
"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.
"I don't like communists in my country," said Silvio Alvano, a taxi driver who lives in the slum, adding that he was voting for Serra.
On Sao Paulo's main avenue, Silva supporters waved his party’s red flag emblazoned with a white star out car windows and raised a cacophony by tooting their horns.
Silva first ran for president in 1989 as the candidate of the Workers Party, urging landless farm workers to invade private property and calling for a default on Brazil's foreign debt, which now stands at $230 billion.
However, in the three subsequent presidential campaigns, Silva moderated his radical tone.
Silva has criticized current President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's unbridled free-market policies but is believed to be considering several fiscal conservatives as members of his economic team.
Cardoso — who privatized many of Brazil's giant monopolies and lowered import taxes, but failed to help millions of poor Brazilians - has led Brazil for two four-year terms. He is barred from seeking a third.
washingtonpost.com |
