Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was battling to secure the votes needed to clinch an outright victory in Sunday’s presidential election after public disgust over corrupt politics eroded his support in the final days of campaigning.
Failure by Lula to win more than 50% of the vote would mean he faces a run-off against his closest rival on October 29. That could unite the opposition against him and give them more time to dig up further evidence of campaign wrongdoing by his ruling Workers’ Party.
Preliminary results showed that with 80% of the vote counted, Lula had 49,6% and his main challenger, former São Paulo state governor Geraldo Alckmin, had 40,6%.
Election officials said that a 70% count or more indicated a representative national trend.
The tight contest marked a dramatic shift in the last few days as opposition candidates assailed Lula, a former union leader from a humble background, over the sleaze and corruption scandals surrounding his Workers’ Party.
Polls in the months leading up to the election had shown Lula coasting to an easy outright victory in the first round, bolstered by the support of the poor and workers whose lives have improved because of his social and economic policies.
But revelations that his campaign staff tried to buy information for a smear campaign against Alckmin gave a lackluster opposition new ammunition. They also raised the memory of a string of bribery and vote-buying scandals in the past two years which have cost Lula’s chief of staff, his finance minister and other aides their jobs.
More than 125-million Brazilians voted, from hamlets in the Amazon to the skyscrapers of São Paulo and the violent slums of Rio de Janeiro to the prosperous southern farmlands.
”I am not prejudiced (about his class background). He did not lose support because he was a metalworker. He lost support because he did not do anything and because he lacks ethical principles,” said Vera Lucia Duarte Goncalves, a 51-year-old lawyer voting in a middle-class area of Brazil’s business capital São Paulo.
Lula, voting in his hometown, the industrial suburb Sao Bernado do Campo, said he was confident he would win in the first round but aides expressed anxiety over his chances.
Support for the burly 60-year-old, who rose from union politics in a Sao Bernardo car factory to the leadership of the world’s fourth-largest democracy, has been boosted by rising wages and social welfare programs that have benefited the ranks of poor in this country of 185-million people.
Adelnilson Da Silva (25) a recent migrant from the poor northeastern state of Pernambuco said he would vote for Lula.
”He may be corrupt but he’s the first president in my life that has helped poor people,” Da Silva said, selling coconut juice at a São Paulo food market.
Alckmin, the stiff, former governor of Brazil’s richest state São Paulo, has promised to cut taxes and make conditions easier for investment.
”Lula has already had his chance and Brazil cannot lose any more time. Ethics will win over corruption,” Alckmin said as he cast his ballot in São Paulo with his wife at his side. – Reuters