BRAZIL: PRESIDENTIAL FAVOURITE LULA CELEBRATES 57TH BIRTHDAY AS BRAZILIANS VOTE IN 2ND ROUND OF ELECTIONS.

Record ID: 640642

  • Title: BRAZIL: PRESIDENTIAL FAVOURITE LULA CELEBRATES 57TH BIRTHDAY AS BRAZILIANS VOTE IN 2ND ROUND OF ELECTIONS.
  • Date: 28th October 2002
  • Summary: (W6) RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL (OCTOBER 27, 2002) (REUTERS) VARIOUS: PEOPLE VOTING (7 SHOTS) GV/MCU: CHILD SINGING SONG IN SUPPORT OF LULA (2 SHOTS) (W6) SAO PAULO, BRAZIL (OCTOBER 27, 2002) (REUTERS) TV/PAN: LULA AT VOTING STATION WITH HIS WIFE MARISA
  • Embargoed: 12th November 2002 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: RIO DE JANEIRO AND SAO PAULO, BRAZIL
  • Country: Brazil
  • Topics: General,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA7HPEFFWSRS52ZGDO5CROQ2OAW
  • Story Text: Leading presidential candidate, leftist Luiz Inacio
    Lula da Silva, has celebrated his 57th birthday as Brazilians
    voted in the country's second round elections under tight
    security.



    Brazilians continued voting on Sunday (October 27) in
    the second round elections that many polls have indicated
    would propel leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva into the
    presidency, ushering in a new era for Latin America's largest
    nation.

    Voters from the concrete jungles of the south to Amazon
    outposts made their way by foot, car or river boat to
    electronic ballot boxes as this country of 170 million began
    registering a clamor for change.

    A former metalworker, Lula is overwhelmingly expected to
    win. He has become a symbol of hope for slum dwellers and the
    middle class, both caught up in a vicious cycle of poverty and
    violence that improved little in President Fernando Henrique
    Cardoso's eight-year administration.

    Rival candidate Jose Serra, a former health minister
    backed by the centrist ruling coalition, was forecast to win
    between 36 to 38 percent of votes while Lula could gather as
    much as 64 percent.

    Polls opened at 8 a.m. (1100 GMT/6 a.m. EDT) and the count
    is expected to be about 70 percent complete just a few hours
    after polls close at 7 p.m.

    Lula shifted his left-wing Workers' Party's platform to
    the center to win over conservative voters after he failed in
    his previous three bids to be president of the world's fourth
    largest democracy.

    If victorious, he would be Brazil's first working-class
    president and the country's first elected leftist leader,
    showcasing Brazil's young democracy in what is only its fourth
    election since the end of a 1964-1985 military dictatorship.

    Draped in the red starred flags of the Workers' Party,
    supporters of the bearded ex-union boss blasted their horns,
    anticipating victory for Lula.

    Lula narrowly missed out on a first-round victory on Oct.

    6, sending 115 million voters back to some 406,000
    computerized ballot boxes from Brazil's expansive beaches to
    its southern swamplands.

    Lula's near-win unleashed a fresh attack by financial
    markets on Brazil's stocks, bonds and the currency as Wall
    Street doubted his ability to keep the world's ninth largest
    economy on an even keel and to manage $260 billion in debt.

    As polls opened, soldiers stood by to keep the peace in
    many parts of the country with 4,000 troops backed up by
    helicopters positioned around the crime-ridden slums of Rio de
    Janeiro, where drug traffickers call the shots.

    Some states also hold a runoff vote for governor including
    Sao Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul and the capital, Brasilia.

    A victory for Lula, who celebrates his 57th birthday on
    Sunday, would mark a dramatic shift for Brazil and a turning
    point in Latin American history, where leaders have generally
    been picked from a small wealthy elite or from the military.

    To increase his chances of victory, Lula swapped his jeans
    for smart suits and silenced his party's radical side. The
    approach, dubbed "Lula-light," appears to have paid off.

    Business barons and entrenched right-wingers jumped on the
    Lula bandwagon alongside grass-roots leftists in a common
    belief that he was their best bet to get the limping economy
    back on its feet and narrow what is one of the world's biggest
    income distribution gaps.

    About 10 percent of the population controls 50 percent of
    its wealth, much of which sprouts from the vast agricultural
    and mineral resources of a landmass larger than the
    continental United States.

    Serra was the hope of investors who wanted more of the
    free-market reforms of the Cardoso era.

    But with unemployment at its highest level since early
    2000, real wages falling and 50 million people living in
    poverty, Cardoso was always in for a challenge to elect his
    chosen successor.

    In recent days what local media has dubbed the "red wave,"
    after the Workers' Party's traditional socialist colors, has
    swept markets as investors have eased off what had been a
    relentless pummeling of stocks, bonds and the currency.
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