Leftist Runs Far Ahead in Brazilian Vote

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won a big victory in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election Sunday, but the leftist leader failed to achieve a majority and will probably face Jose Serra, the conservative ruling-party candidate, in a runoff.

With about three-quarters of the votes tallied, the man known here simply as “Lula” was leading Serra by 47% to 24%. If the results stand, the two men will face each other in a second round Oct. 27.

“We prepared ourselves to fight this election in one round, and we prepared for two rounds,” Lula said early Sunday. “If we win in the first round, that would be excellent.”

The large vote for Lula--running for president for the fourth time--signaled a rebuke to the eight years of pro-market reforms and globalization engineered by outgoing President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and his Brazilian Social Democratic Party.

“A large amount of the public recognizes Cardoso as a good president but believes that his government made grave mistakes,” said Helio Jaguaribe, a political science professor in Rio de Janeiro. “They think his administration created an economic model that should be replaced.”

Finishing third and fourth in the six-candidate field were two center-left candidates. Anthony Garotinho, a former governor of Rio de Janeiro state, came in third with 16%. Ciro Gomes, a former Communist Party activist and later finance minister, was fourth with 13%.

Nearly three-quarters of the Brazilian electorate voted for left and center-left candidates in early returns. And Lula was leading, often by a large margin, in all but three of Brazil’s 26 states.

Bush administration officials fear a Lula victory could signal a turn away from free-market reform throughout the region. Lula has promised to seek better terms for Brazil in negotiations over the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. Businessmen were also anxious to see what Lula’s strong showing will mean for the stock and currency markets when they open this morning.

“The people who moved toward Lula wanted clean politics, seriousness in government, opportunity for new leaders, safety on the streets and a return to hope and happiness in their homes,” said Rio economist Paulo Rabello de Castro. “They see Lula as the best alternative to eight years of center-right rule.”

Cardoso tamed inflation, privatized government businesses and brought growth to Brazil, but he failed to narrow the great chasm between rich and poor. After he was elected to a second term in 1998--defeating Lula in the first round--economic growth slowed to a crawl.

Unable to run for reelection again because of term limits, Cardoso handpicked Serra to be his successor.

“Brazil is full of problems, but many good things have already been accomplished,” Serra said Thursday during the last debate of the campaign. “The important thing is that tomorrow be better than today.”

A former health minister in Cardoso’s government, Serra gained notoriety when he threatened to break pharmaceutical patents unless foreign drug companies cut prices on AIDS medications. Still, he was unable to distance himself from the financial crisis.

“We will make it to the second round, if God wills it,” Serra said Sunday as he cast his vote in Sao Paulo, South America’s largest city and the country’s economic nerve center.

A runoff between Serra and Lula would be a showdown between two opposing visions of Brazil’s future. Serra is a favorite of the financial markets, and it is widely expected that he would continue most of Cardoso’s economic plan.

Lula has called for increased spending on health and education and has said that Brazil is the victim of unfair trade agreements with the United States that hurt working people and the poor.

“We believe we can turn Brazil around and begin to grow again,” the candidate said at a news conference last week. “It’s the only way out for a big country like Brazil, to resolve the very serious internal social problems ... by creating jobs and creating an equal distribution of income.”

Whoever is the next president of Brazil will inherit seemingly intractable economic problems. About 11 million Brazilians are unemployed, while Brazil’s public debt has spiraled up to $260 billion, greater than half the gross domestic product. The national currency, the real, has dropped precipitously amid fears that Brazil might default on its debt.

Many well-off Brazilians, fearing a President Lula would intentionally default on the debt, withdrew their savings from the country even before the election, creating a crisis for the banking system.

In August, Lula, Serra and the other candidates agreed to respect the terms of a $30-billion bailout agreement reached between Cardoso’s government and the International Monetary Fund.

The agreement calls for a sharp reduction in government spending next year. But Lula has given mixed signals as to whether he would respect the budget targets.

Even if the Workers’ Party candidate turned out to have earned an outright victory Sunday, he would face a difficult task in trying to govern. His party is not likely to win more than 140 seats in the 594-member National Congress, analysts say.

A former trade unionist, Lula founded the Workers’ Party in 1980. In recent years, the party has won elections in several cities and states, earning a reputation for being made up of honest--if not always efficient--administrators.

Under the tutelage of marketing wizard Duda Mendonca, the Workers’ Party refashioned the image of its leader. The radical laborite of the late 1970s was transformed into an avuncular statesman as comfortable meeting with business leaders as with trade union militants.

The party’s most radical members disparagingly called the media campaign “Lula Light.” Still, the party’s militant left wing remained loyal, even when Lula named a conservative businessman, Jose Alencar, as his running mate.

One commercial converted the party’s revolutionary symbol--a red star--into an oversized toy that children tossed about a beach, conveying a key part of Mendonca’s message: There’s no need to fear Lula and the Workers’ Party.

Lula’s campaign created a political program meant to balance the clamor for change with concerns that his party was too radical to govern Brazil. He called for a break with the “neo-liberal” economics of the past but said he would not default on Brazil’s public debt.

The Workers’ Party’s candidates for governor were not doing as well Sunday in Brazil’s largest states, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. In the latter, incumbent Workers’ Party Gov. Benedita da Silva was running a distant second to Rosinha Matheus, the wife of presidential candidate Garotinho.

It was clear Sunday that much of what appealed to voters about the Workers’ Party was Lula himself and the story of how the son of an impoverished family of seven children from the northern state of Pernambuco became a national leader.

Lula voted at a school in Sao Bernardo do Campo just across the street from the house where he once lived, in a working-class neighborhood normally lost amid the vast Sao Paulo urban sprawl.

Awaiting his arrival were hundreds of friends, former neighbors and fellow union members who have known him for decades, long before he first rose to prominence as a union leader at the nearby Volkswagen plant.

When the bearded and diminutive candidate voted at 10 a.m., in a gray suit, sweating profusely and giving a thumbs-up to raucous well-wishers, voters were lined up halfway around the block.

The candidate was jostled by supporters and reporters entering and leaving, and the school grounds were awash in leaflets extolling Lula and other Workers’ Party candidates.

For most of the solidly pro-Lula voters assembled there--like Flora Aguilar, a 67-year-old school cafeteria worker--the possible victory of the local hero after four tries was “the big step we’ve been fighting for.... It’s an incredible emotion we are feeling now.”

“I’ve known him for 40 years. “We grew up together, went out for beers together, were officers in the union together,” said Jose Perreira, 60, a retired Volkswagen metalworker. “It’s been a war to achieve the level where he is now. But I never had any doubt he would make it .”

About 115 million Brazilians were expected to cast votes using innovative computerized ballot boxes. In the most remote areas of the vast country--in the Amazon jungle, for example--the boxes transmitted their data via satellite. Still, problems arose in several cities, with some voters waiting in line for three hours. Some illiterate residents of Rio were confused by the system and took up to 45 minutes to cast their ballots.

Voting is obligatory in Brazil, and those who fail to show up at the polls on election day face fines.

In Rio, where the weeks before the election saw stores shut down in reaction to fears of violence orchestrated by drug dealers, about 3,000 army soldiers patrolled.

Tobar reported from Rio de Janeiro and Kraul from Sao Bernardo do Campo. Times staff writer Paula Gobbi in Rio contributed to this report.