Divided Brazil votes for election of next president
27 Oct 2014 5:36 AM IST
Leftist incumbent Dilma Rousseff is the narrow favorite heading into the vote, with a four- to six-point advantage over center-right business favorite Aecio Neves in the race to lead the world’s seventh-largest economy, Saturday’s final surveys showed.
Datafolha gave Rousseff a 52-48 percent lead, just on the two-percentage-point margin for error, while indicating it saw a ‘probability’ of her winning the contest.
An Ibope Institute poll for its part showed Rousseff ahead by 53-47 percent, breaking the technical tie.Winning back front-runner status has been a battle for Brazil’s first woman president -- a former guerrilla once jailed and tortured for fighting the country’s 1964-1985 military regime.
The vote is widely seen as a referendum on 12 years of government by her Workers’ Party (PT) -- eight under working-class hero Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and four under Rousseff, his seemingly less-charmed successor.The party endeared itself to the masses with landmark social programs that have lifted millions from 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.
She has also been battered by a multi-billion-dollar embezzlement scandal implicating dozens of politicians -- mainly her allies -- at state-owned oil giant Petrobras. Before the October 5 first-round vote, she had to fend off environmentalist Marina Silva, who surged in the preference polls with her vow to become Brazil’s first ‘poor, black’ president when she 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 first round with 21 percent of the vote, to Rousseff’s 42 percent and Neves’s 34 percent -- than the incumbent had to beat back Neves, who converted the momentum of his first-round comeback into a narrow lead.
With the candidates fighting for every vote in this sprawling country of 202 million people, the campaign took on a level of virulence not seen since the return to democracy.Rousseff, known for her tough skin, accused Neves of nepotism as governor of Minas Gerais state, then played up a media report that he once hit his then-girlfriend in public.
And she suggested he 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.The Social Democracy Party candidate accused Rousseff of lying, incompetent economic management and ‘collusion’ in the Petrobras kickbacks.
Datafolha gave Rousseff a 52-48 percent lead, just on the two-percentage-point margin for error, while indicating it saw a ‘probability’ of her winning the contest.
An Ibope Institute poll for its part showed Rousseff ahead by 53-47 percent, breaking the technical tie.Winning back front-runner status has been a battle for Brazil’s first woman president -- a former guerrilla once jailed and tortured for fighting the country’s 1964-1985 military regime.
The vote is widely seen as a referendum on 12 years of government by her Workers’ Party (PT) -- eight under working-class hero Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and four under Rousseff, his seemingly less-charmed successor.The party endeared itself to the masses with landmark social programs that have lifted millions from 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.
She has also been battered by a multi-billion-dollar embezzlement scandal implicating dozens of politicians -- mainly her allies -- at state-owned oil giant Petrobras. Before the October 5 first-round vote, she had to fend off environmentalist Marina Silva, who surged in the preference polls with her vow to become Brazil’s first ‘poor, black’ president when she 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 first round with 21 percent of the vote, to Rousseff’s 42 percent and Neves’s 34 percent -- than the incumbent had to beat back Neves, who converted the momentum of his first-round comeback into a narrow lead.
With the candidates fighting for every vote in this sprawling country of 202 million people, the campaign took on a level of virulence not seen since the return to democracy.Rousseff, known for her tough skin, accused Neves of nepotism as governor of Minas Gerais state, then played up a media report that he once hit his then-girlfriend in public.
And she suggested he 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.The Social Democracy Party candidate accused Rousseff of lying, incompetent economic management and ‘collusion’ in the Petrobras kickbacks.
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