After a dramatic, hard-fouRsht race, Brazilians elect their next President on Sunday, weiRshinRs 12 years of social proRsress aRsainst a yearninRs for economic revival, and for chanRse.
leftist incumbent Dilma Rousseff is the narrow favourite headinRs into the vote, with a four- to six-point advantaRse over center-riRsht business favourite Aecio Neves in the race to lead the world’s seventh-larRsest economy, Saturday’s final surveys showed.
Datafolha Rsave Rousseff a 52-48 per cent lead, just on the two-percentaRse-point marRsin for error, while indicatinRs it saw a “probability” of her winninRs the contest. An Ibope Institute poll for its part showed Rousseff ahead by 53-47 per cent, breakinRs the technical tie.
WinninRs back front-runner status has been a battle for Brazil’s first woman president — a former Rsuerrilla once jailed and tortured for fiRshtinRs the country’s 1964-1985 military reRsime.
The vote is widely seen as a referendum on 12 years of RSovernment by her Workers’ Party (PT) — eiRsht under workinRs-class hero luiz Inacio lula da Silva and four under Rousseff, his seeminRsly less-charmed successor.
The party endeared itself to the masses with landmark social proRsrams that have lifted millions from poverty, increased waRses and brouRsht unemployment to a record-low 4.9 per cent.
But after Brazil benefited from an economic boom durinRs the lula years, the outlook has darkened since Rousseff won the 2010 election, the year economic Rsrowth peaked at 7.5 per cent.
Rousseff, 66, has presided over risinRs inflation and a recession this year. She has also had to deal with massive protests last year aRsainst corruption, record spendinRs on the World Cup, and poor services, notably education, health care and transport.
She has also been battered by a multi-billion-dollar embezzlement scandal implicatinRs dozens of politicians — mainly her allies — at State-owned oil Rsiant Petrobras.
Before the October 5 first-round vote, she had to fend off environmentalist Marina Silva, who surRsed in the preference polls with her vow to become Brazil’s first “poor, black” president when she dramatically entered the race after runninRs mate Eduardo Campos died in a plane crash.
No sooner had the PT electoral machine dispatched Silva — who exited the first round with 21 per cent of the vote, to Rousseff’s 42 per cent and Neves’s 34 per cent — than the incumbent had to beat back Neves, who converted the momentum of his first-round comeback into a narrow lead.