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NEWS
BRAZIL
Brazilians
reelect Lula da Silva
Brazilians overwhelmingly
reelected President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for a second term. He
defeated conservative challenger Geraldo Alckmin in a runoff.
BY JACK CHANG
McClatchy News Service
RIO DE JANEIRO - Having survived corruption scandals and desertions by
longtime allies, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won
reelection Sunday in a landslide victory that promises to strengthen his
weakened government.
With 90.6 percent of polling places counted Sunday night, the
61-year-old former union leader won 60.5 percent of the vote in the
runoff, while challenger Geraldo Alckmin, the former governor of the
country's richest and most populous state, garnered 39.4 percent of the
vote. Brazilians also voted in 10 gubernatorial runoff elections.
The results confirmed public opinion polls showing the president running
away with the second-round election after doing more poorly than
predicted in the Oct. 1 first-round vote and falling short of the
majority he would have needed for an outright win.
The victory also capped a tumultuous first term in office, during which
the president weathered a revolt by the radical wing of his center-left
Workers' Party and almost succumbed to a wave of corruption scandals.
Political analysts said the president's first-round chances were hurt
after members of his party and campaign were caught in mid-September
allegedly trying to mount a failed smear campaign against Alckmin and
another rival.
The president had already spent much of last year mired in a
bribes-for-votes scandal involving top administration officials.
''We didn't have any new developments in this latest scandal, so that
played in Lula's favor in the second round,'' said Alessandra Alde, a
political scientist at the University Research Institute of Rio de
Janeiro. ``People are skeptical of their politicians and think they're
all the same, so these scandals always had a limited effect.''
ECONOMIC GAINS
What put the president on top were a solid, if unspectacular, economy
and social programs that transferred billions of dollars in welfare aid
to Brazil's poorest, voters and analysts said. The president's humble
origins -- he was the son of illiterate parents in the country's poor
northeast -- also won over many voters.
His policies apparently had its effects. Between 2003 and 2005, the
number of people in extreme poverty dropped 19 percent, one study shows.
''He helped people who were never given any attention to,'' said Deise
de Oliveira, an accountant from a working-class Rio de Janeiro
neighborhood who voted for Lula da Silva. ``He did good things despite
the scandals. He's with the poor, while Alckmin is with the elites.''
Another Lula da Silva supporter, teacher Melissa Ferreira, said the
president had broken with past governments by giving federal
investigators free rein to weed out corruption, which had always
existed.
''Corruption is a thing that didn't just start now,'' Ferreira said.
``It's only appearing now because Lula's government is looking into
it.''
Alckmin and other critics say the president used aid programs to buy the
votes of poor Brazilians and say his government set a new low for
scandal. They also point out that many of the government's aid programs
started under former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who hails,
along with Alckmin, from the centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party.
''The money is helping people, but they've become hostages to it,'' said
Rio de Janeiro public school principal Tony Menezes, who voted for
Alckmin Sunday. ``They receive this help, and they don't want to lose
it, so they vote for Lula.''
`I AM HAPPY'
Speaking to reporters Sunday morning after voting in a suburb of Sao
Paulo city, Lula da Silva was already proclaiming victory.
''The reelection is an important thing,'' he said. ``I am happy because
the Brazilian people recognized the work of these four years and were
very generous.''
Alckmin, deserted in the end by many of his political allies, was still
betting on an upset victory as he voted in a Sao Paulo neighborhood
Sunday morning.
The second-round campaign was marked by ideological debates, with the
president accusing Alckmin of planning to privatize state-owned
companies and cut welfare benefits to poor Brazilians. Alckmin scurried
to defuse the president's attacks while hammering the incumbent over
accusations of government corruption.
Despite the rhetorical sparring, the candidates' platforms were not very
different, Alde said. Both candidates pushed pro-business platforms such
as running primary budget surpluses and checking inflation although
Alckmin has said he would more aggressively cut government spending.
That orthodox fiscal policy cost Lula da Silva, in the first years of
his presidency, the support of many longtime allies who left the
Workers' Party accusing the president of betraying his radical roots.
Two party defectors, senators Cristovam Buarque and Heloisa Helena Lima
de Moraes Carvalho, ran against Lula da Silva this year and won more
than 9 percent of the first-round vote.
LULA'S PARTY STRONGER
Nonetheless, Lula da Silva's party emerges from this election season as
a political force, controlling the second largest group of
representatives in the lower house of the federal Congress and at least
four of the country's 27 governorships. Lula da Silva also will start
his final four-year term with the support of at least 17 governors.
The country's top electoral official, however, has said the president
could be removed from office if continuing investigations into the
failed smear campaign reveal wrongdoing on his part.
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