Brazilian Leftist Clings to Slim Lead in Presidential Ballot

As returns trickled in Friday from the first round of Brazilian presidential elections, Luis Inacio da Silva of the Marxist-oriented Workers’ Party held a dwindling advantage in the race for second place and for a position on the runoff ballot.

Leonel Brizola of the left-leaning Democratic Labor Party was close behind Da Silva, known as Lula, in the official computations. One or the other will face Fernando Collor de Mello and his centrist National Reconstruction Party in the Dec. 17 runoff.

Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, last held direct presidential elections in 1960.

Collor had 28.3% of the votes Friday evening, when about half the ballots had been tabulated by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. Lula had 16.1% and Brizola 14.4%, and 18 others shared the rest.

However, the Globo TV network said Brizola had a narrow and diminishing lead over Lula in the network’s unofficial computation of about four-fifths of all returns.

Lula predicted Friday evening that late returns from remote areas in the impoverished north and northeast would finally put him ahead of Brizola.

“We continue to be absolutely certain that we will go to the second round of these elections,” he told reporters.

Brizola also predicted victory after protesting the slow pace of official computations. He called the electoral system “ineffective and disorganized.”

“Our country is being put in a ridiculous position,” Brizola said.

He also suggested that despite bitter clashes between him and Lula during the campaign, their parties should join forces for the runoff against Collor. He called Collor a “cub of the dictatorship,” referring to Brazil’s military government from 1964 to 1985.

Collor, 40, got his start in politics with the conservative political party that supported the regime, but he now calls himself a centrist reformer. Officials in Collor’s new party say they will seek center-left alliances for the runoff campaign, rejecting the rightist label that his leftist opponents give him.

Lula, 44, has indicated that if he makes the runoff, he will try to polarize the campaign between right and left. It will be a dispute “of pennies against millions, of poor against rich,” he has said.

A former machinist and automotive union leader, Lula calls himself a socialist. Some major factions of his labor-based Workers’ Party are staunchly Marxist, and the party has an election alliance with a small Communist splinter party.

Brizola, 67, has called himself a socialist in the past but now says he is a moderate Social Democrat. He was governor of Rio de Janeiro state until 1987.