Collor Holding Onto Lead in Brazil : Elections: His leftist rival refuses to concede until count is completed.

Partial returns announced Monday in Brazil’s presidential election confirmed exit polls and reinforced an apparently irreversible trend in favor of Fernando Collor de Mello, 40, a young populist backed by centrists and conservatives.

The Bandeirante television network’s unofficial computations, compiling about 90% of Sunday’s votes, gave Collor 52.7% to 47.3% for socialist Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. A tally by the Globo TV network gave Collor 52.5% and Lula 47.5%, with about 87% of the votes counted. Globo declared Collor the winner.

In the slower official count, Collor and Lula alternated in the lead as the tally continued throughout Monday. With about 72% of the votes counted Monday night, Collor had 51.1% and Lula 48.9%.

Claudio Humberto Rosa, a Collor adviser, said Collor “already considers himself elected.”

However, Paulo Renato Paim, a congressman for Lula’s Marxist-oriented Workers’ Party, said the party maintained its hopes for victory. “We think the election will be decided by the last vote,” he said.

Independent analysts said they are certain that Collor has won. All national exit polls conducted during the voting Sunday showed him with an advantage of 2.9 to 4 percentage points.

Lula’s party filed complaints with election authorities over a lack of public transportation in some cities during the election. According to the party, many of Lula’s supporters were unable to reach polls because bus companies kept buses out of circulation in working-class areas of Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Fortaleza.

If election authorities find that the turnout was reduced by numbers large enough to change the election’s outcome, polls may be reopened in the affected areas.

Collor’s apparent victory is a relief to business leaders and conservatives who feared the anti-capitalist policies that Lula pledged to follow if elected. Prices on the Sao Paulo stock market rose 9% Monday morning with the election news.

Policies that Collor pledged to adopt generally favor private enterprise. However, he also appealed for the support of Brazil’s poor majority by promising to increase the purchasing power of low-paid workers and strengthen government health and education programs.

Handsome and energetic, Collor also won support from working-class Brazilians by vowing to root out government corruption, reduce the income of an elite group of overpaid bureaucrats, crack down on tax evaders and cut down government waste.

He said his drive for government efficiency will include the privatization of some state-owned enterprises. Such measures, he said, will help reduce the government’s operating deficit and fight inflation, which is approaching a withering rate of 50% a month and promises to be the new administration’s most serious problem.

Another major problem will be Brazil’s $112-billion foreign debt, the largest in the Third World. The incumbent administration of President Jose Sarney has failed to make interest payments since mid-year on about $70 billion owed to private foreign banks. Sarney is not running in the election.

Collor said during the campaign that he will negotiate a sharp reduction in annual debt payments, but he said Brazil will avoid any confrontation with its creditors.

Walder de Goes, a Brazilian political scientist, said Monday that a victory for Collor will tend to smooth over conflicts with the United States and Western Europe. Under Collor, De Goes said, “Brazil will not have an interruption in its loyalty to the international capitalist system.”

Sunday’s election was a runoff between the two candidates who led a field of 21 in the first round of voting Nov. 15.

This is the first time since 1960 that Brazil has elected a president by direct popular vote. Sarney’s transitional administration succeeded a conservative military regime that governed the country from 1964 to 1985.

With 150 million people, Brazil is Latin America’s largest nation.

Brazilian Election Based on 72% of returns counted in the Presidential election. Fernando Collor de Mello, National Reconstruction Party: 51.1% Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, Workers’ Party: 48.9%.

Source: Supreme Electorate Court