BRAZIL: Brazilians cast their votes in presidential elections

Brazilians lined up to vote on Sunday (October 1) amid signs that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, though still the champion of the poor and workers, may have squandered his chances of a first-round victory because of scandals over sleazy politics. Two polls released on Saturday night showed for the first time in the campaign that Lula could fall short of the more than 50 percent of the vote needed to hand him a second four-year term. Failure to win an absolute majority means voters would go back to the ballot box in a run-off on Oct. 29 -- prolonging a poisonous political atmosphere in the world's fourth-largest democracy. More than 125 million Brazilians are voting, from hamlets in the Amazon to the skyscrapers of Sao Paulo, the violent slums of Rio de Janeiro to the prosperous farmlands of the south. It is Brazil's sixth presidential election since 21 years of military rule ended in 1985. The 60-year-old Lula, who rose from shining shoes in city streets to the leadership of Latin America's largest country, is pitched against Geraldo Alckmin of the centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party, or PSDB, and six other candidates. Until two weeks ago, former factory worker Lula had been cruising to a first-round victory boosted by rising wages, a sound economy, and social welfare programs that have benefited millions of poor in this country of 185 million people. Revelations two weeks ago his campaign staff tried to buy information for a smear campaign against Alckmin and others gave the so-far lackluster opposition new ammunition to go on the attack and reminded voters of a string of corruption scandals involving Lula's ruling Workers' Party. Most of Brazil's rich have always looked down on Lula with snobbish disdain. But the dirty politics may have prompted middle-class voters to turn their backs on him, analysts said. As well as the presidential contests, Brazilians will for vote state governors, Congress and state assemblies. Lula could lose an already fragile majority in the lower house of Congress and face a larger opposition majority in the Senate. The ballot takes place as Brazilians mourn for the victims of the country's worst-ever air disaster. All 155 people on board are believed to have died in a passenger airliner that crashed in the Amazon jungle on Friday (September 29).

ITN Source | October 1, 2006

Tags:. .dirty. .congress. .absolute. .opposition. .cruising