Lula's pick, Rousseff, remains favourite in runoff

By Diana Renee Oct 5, 2010, 13:07 GMT

Rio de Janeiro - Dilma Rousseff, the protege of outgoing Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, remains the favourite to win the October 31 presidential runoff - which would make her Brazil's first female president.

The leftist Rousseff, of Lula's Workers' Party (PT), got 46.91 per cent of the votes Sunday in the first round of voting.

Her closest rival, social democrat Jose Serra, got 32.61 per cent of the votes, according to a report by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal made public Monday, with nearly all the ballots counted.

'Despite her stumble, Dilma remains the favourite, but she will have to manage the frustration of a bitter result in the light of the expectations and the euphoria in the pro-Lula camp,' analyst Fernando de Barros e Silva said Monday in the daily Folha de Sao Paulo.

In the home stretch, Rousseff lost votes to Green Party candidate Marina Silva.

Silva, who like Rousseff is a former minister in Lula's cabinet, was without a doubt Sunday's biggest winner even though she did not make it to the runoff, coming in third with a surprising 19.33 per cent of the votes. She emerged as a likely decider ahead of the runoff and her voters are bound to be courted by both sides.

Silva and Rousseff were in Lula's cabinet after his first inauguration in 2003 until Silva left in 2008, feeling forsaken by Lula in repeated clashes with Rousseff and other fellow ministers.

While environment minister Silva wanted to keep in check the effects of economic development on the environment and on local communities, Rousseff, first as energy minister and later as chief of staff, and others had fewer qualms about pushing ahead with development.

In the campaign, Silva focused on the need to empower citizens through education as well as through purchasing power, and her message clearly struck a chord, particularly among younger voters.

Lula's huge popularity and the positive feelings of close to 30 million Brazilians who emerged from poverty and into the world of consumption in his eight years in power remain Rousseff's trump cards.

Besides, history supports her cause: In the three presidential elections that went to a runoff since the return of democratic polling in 1989, the winner of the first round has eventually carried the presidency.

Political analyst Lucia Hippolito warned Monday: 'That is history, not fate.' Indeed, those statistics talk about the past and cannot guarantee Rousseff a win later this month.

   Opposition candidate Serra said he hopes to increase his share of the vote considerably. 'We will march to victory,' he said late Sunday.

Serra's optimism is based on his belief that his party will now have got over first-round divisions and will unite around his name, and also on his chances of 'inheriting' most of Silva's votes even if the 'green' candidate declines to support him in the runoff.

A recent opinion poll by the private Datafolha Institute showed that 50 per cent of Silva's voters would support Serra and only 29 per cent would side with Rousseff in a runoff. The remaining 21 per cent were undecided, Datafolha said.

In 2006, Lula failed in his efforts at re-election in just one round of voting. However, he crushed Geraldo Alckmin, of Serra's Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), in the runoff, by getting more than 60 per cent of the votes.

Will Rousseff manage to emulate her mentor? Alckmin, who was elected Sunday as governor of Brazil's most powerful state, Sao Paulo, said the situation is quite different.

'First, Rousseff is not the incumbent. Second, she does not have Lula's popularity,' he said.