Three election surveys showed Rousseff was the frontrunner in the first round ballot scheduled for October 5, but would lose to Silva, a former environment minister, in a likely runoff.

The trusted polling firm Ibope said the incumbent was on track to claim 37% of votes compared to Silva’s 33% support in the first round. DataFolha, another polling company, showed Rousseff would win 35% of votes to Silva’s 34%.

But according to election forecasts by both Ibope and DataFolha, Rousseff would then lose to Silva in the second round of the elections on October 23.

Brazilian media reported that Rousseff, 66, has gone on the offensive in recent days, bent on chipping away at Silva’s second-round advantage. Rousseff aimed a volley of attacks at Silva, 56, on Monday night, during the second televised debate of the presidential race.

The incumbent questioned her rival’s ability to pay for her myriad campaign promises, including all-day public schools, while at the same time moving away from oil production.

With Silva now incarnating the movement for political change in Brazil, traditionally the banner of Rousseff’s ruling Workers’ Party (PT), Rousseff has started suggesting she would do things differently if entrusted with a second term as president.

“Obviously if there is a new administration… new politics and a new team would be necessary,” Rousseff reportedly told a meeting of business leaders in the city of Belo Horizonte on Wednesday. “What I don’t want to do is give the impression that I think everything has been accomplished.”

Her campaign team has also petitioned Brazilian election authorities to open an investigation into Silva’s finances, claiming she has omitted income from several public speaking engagements in documents filed with the election body.

Rousseff’s campaign claimed there were inconsistencies between Silva’s reported income and the earnings of a business she owns, according to the leading Folha de S. Paulo daily.

Rousseff has seen her approval ratings plummet in recent months, leading many to wonder whether the Workers Party will be swept aside after 12 years in power.

The Brazilian national team’s disappointing performance at the World Cup has been touted as one of the reasons for her sudden drop in popularity. But perhaps the biggest blow came with news that the country’s economy had slipped into recession this year.

Meanwhile, Silva appears to be surfing on a wave of sympathy for her Socialist Party after the shocking death of its presidential candidate Eduardo Campos in a plane crash on August 13.

Silva, who split with the PT in 2009, became the Socialist Party’s new candidate following the tragedy, and saw her approval ratings skyrocket overnight. It remains to be seen whether she can maintain that momentum as the election campaign enters the final stretch.

Mercopress

The two of them had been together in Rio de Janeiro, where Campos had been interviewed on the Globo television network, and he had offered her a ride to Guarujá. But, at the last minute, Silva decided to go straight to the São Paulo airport of Guarulhos instead, aboard a commercial flight.

The decision will shape her future for years to come. Silva – who until Wednesday was running as Campos’ running-mate – will now have to decide if she is ready to take his place and represent the Brazilian Socialist Party’s (PSB) presidential aspirations.

Under Brazilian law, the PSB has 10 days to decide on a candidate.

The daughter of illiterate rubber-tappers, Silva grew up in the rainforest and learned to read as a teenager. Orphaned at 16, she moved from the Bagaço rubber tree plantation to the capital of the western state of Acre, Rio Branco, where she worked as a maid.

She eventually made it to university, where she became politically active, and graduated at 26. At 36, she became Brazil’s youngest senator. In 2003, then-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva picked her as his Environment minister, a position she used to fight against deforestation.

But ideological differences eventually led her to break with the Workers’ Party (PT) and join the Green Party. In the 2010 presidential election, she ran on an environmental platform and came third with a surprising 19.3% of votes, the equivalent to 20 million voters.

An evangelical with a feisty campaign style, Silva is an unconventional figure in Brazilian politics. Her conservationist advocacy has earned the wrath of Brazil’s powerful agribusiness sector, yet Silva can appeal to conservative voters with her defense of family values and opposition to abortion.

Last year, as massive protests hit the country’s political establishment, polls revealed she was the only political figure still trusted by voters. As President Dilma Rousseff dipped in polls, Marina – as she is known to Brazilians – kept rising.

After failing to register her own political party on time for this year’s electoral campaign, an alliance with Campos became her only option, even though she had a political identity of her own and greater name recognition than her running-mate.

She also had more supporters, which made her a particularly appealing vice-presidential candidate.

A visibly shaken Silva spoke to reporters in Santos following the plane crash on Wednesday. In her brief remarks, she focused on her relationship with Campos.

“During these 10 months of partnership, I learned to respect him, admire him and feel confidence in his attitudes and his ideals in life,” Silva said in a soft, wavering voice. “He had a commitment to making Brazil a better country,” she said.

The deceased Brazilian presidential candidate Eduardo Campos, 49, was a former governor of the northeastern state of Pernambuco and belongs to a traditional family from the Brazilian political establishment.

In the latest opinion polls Campos had 10% support from likely voters, according to a survey released on July 22 by polling firm Ibope ahead of the October 5 first-round election.

President Dilma Rousseff, who is standing for a second four-year term, leads the race with 38% support, while social democrat Aécio Neves has 22%, the poll found. The presidential campaign officially opens on August 19.

Campos had been traveling to São Paulo, the Brazilian financial hub, to film a campaign-related TV segment with his running mate, ecologist Marina Silva. Silva was not aboard the plane.

Campos, who was married with five children, had been running on a platform of change after 20 years of government by Rousseff’s Workers’ Party (PT) and Neves’s PSDB.

He had served as science and technology minister from 2004 to 2005 under Rousseff’s mentor and predecessor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Lawmakers from Campos’s PSB party expressed their shock on Twitter.

“It is with great sadness that I received the news of the tragedy involving Eduardo Campos. I’m very upset,” representative Julio Delgado tweeted.

“We lost our greatest leader. I’m devastated,” said colleague Beto Albuquerque.

However when the mourning is over, and the campaign officially begins, there will be surprises in the electoral scenario because of Marina Silva, who is expected to become the head of the Socialist presidential ticket.

Originally from an Amazon rubber tappers family, a leading member of Lula’s Workers Party, Senator and later minister, she abandoned the party disenchanted with the government’s environment and indigenous peoples policies.

In 2010 she ran for the presidential office with the Green party and against all odds and opinion polls, garnered 19.5% of the vote.

She later organized a “sustainable network” with environmentalists, minority groups and others who support a sustainable economy as opposed to an extraction, wasteful economy. Silva’s organization was not accepted as a political party and was forced into a strategic alliance with Campos, as vice-president hopeful.

Marina is considered a formidable campaigner, and is a big magnet for many disenchanted voters from the ruling party, which has become too ‘orthodox and distant from its original charter’.

Campos

Brazilian presidential candidate Eduardo Campos, a contender to unseat President Dilma Rousseff in October elections, died Wednesday when his campaign jet crashed in the city of Santos, killing all seven people aboard.

Campos, a 49-year-old socialist who had been running third in the polls, was flying to São Paulo to record a TV segment when his Cessna 560XL slammed into a gymnasium and several houses, breaking into pieces and igniting a large fire.

Rousseff declared a state of national mourning and suspended her campaign for three days.

“All of Brazil is in mourning. We lost a great Brazilian today, Eduardo Campos. We lost a great comrade,” the president said in a statement.

Campos’s plane was en route from Rio de Janeiro’s Santos Dumont airport to Guarujá airport outside São Paulo when it hit bad weather, according to air force spokesman Pedro Luis Farcic.

“As it was preparing to land, the plane fell due to bad weather. Air traffic control then lost contact with the aircraft,” he said.

All seven people aboard the plane died. The other passengers were advisers, a photographer and a videographer.

Flaming piles of rubble sent up a large column of smoke, and several houses were on fire. Santos firefighters said at least 10 people were injured.

The air force said it had launched an investigation into what caused the medium-sized jet to crash. Santos is Brazil’s main overseas port, 70 kilometers from São Paulo.

Mercopress

President Rousseff, who is running for re-election on October 5, has kept fuel prices below international levels to curb above-target inflation. That policy has hurt the finances of Petrobras, which is forced to buy fuel at international prices and sell it more cheaply in the local market.

Economy ministry sources also anticipated that the government will not be able to meet its key fiscal savings target in 2014.

Last week Finance Minister Guido Mantega admitted that the government could raise fuel prices after the election and review its primary surplus target for the year.

The primary surplus, which represents the public sector’s excess revenue over expenditures before the payment of interest on debt, fell well below expectations in the first half of the year.

Many analysts believe the government could revise downward its goal of a primary surplus of 99 billion Reais (US$ 43.52 billion), which is equal to 1.9% of GDP. In the first six months of 2014, the primary surplus was equal to 1.17% of GDP.

Fuel prices and public spending are key in the government’s battle to curb inflation, which has risen less than expected recently but remains at the 6.5% ceiling of the official target.

High inflation and sluggish growth have dragged down the popularity of Rousseff and raised the probability of a second-round run-off election later in October.

Her main rivals, Aécio Neves and former governor Eduardo Campos have complained that fuel price controls have undermined Petrobras, which is considered the world’s most indebted and least profitable major oil company.

Although Brazil is virtually self sufficient in oil, and even exports, the lack of refining capacity dating back to plans of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez to build a giant refinery in the northeast of the country, have conditioned Petrobras finances.

Earnings Down

Second quarter profits for Brazil’s Petrobras dropped 20% compared to the same period one year earlier, the state-run oil giant said. Petrobras recorded profits of 4.96 billion reais (about US$ 2.22 billion) in the quarter, compared to 6.2 billion Reais (nearly US$ 3 billion) for the same period in 2013.

CEO Graça Foster said that the slump in profits was due to an 800 million reais drop in revenue as well as an increase in federal taxes.

The company also imports gasoline – its local refineries cannot meet the domestic demand – and sells it at a subsidized price as set by the Brazilian government.

Income from sales, however, stood at 36.9 billion dollars, up 12% compared to the same period last year.

Only counting crude and liquefied natural gas production, Petrobras had an average production of 1,972 barrels per day in the second quarter, up from 1,931 barrels per day a year earlier.

Petrobras’ imports of oil and derivatives surged 33% in the second quarter from a year earlier to 941,000 barrels a day. The refining division’s quarterly loss ballooned to 3.88 billion Reais, up 54% from the second quarter of 2013.

The fuel subsidy, combined with a massive investment budget, has turned Petrobras into the world’s most indebted oil major. Net debt as of June 30 stood at 109.58 billion, up 16% from the end of 2013.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, fell 10% on the year to 16.26 billion reais.

Brazil aims to be among the world’s top five global oil producers by 2020, when it expects to be producing four million barrels of oil a day. Petrobras reiterated its target of increasing oil production by 7.5%, plus or minus one percentage point, in 2014.

Petrobras Chief Executive Maria das Graças Foster said in a note that the company’s own output of gasoline and diesel will rise in the second half of the year as production at existing refineries improves and the Abreu e Lima refinery, the cost of which has risen past 18 billion, comes online.

“These factors will allow us to reduce by about 30% our imports of oil and derivatives compared with the first half,” Ms. Foster

Agribusiness

Brazil’s agribusiness trade balance closed out July at a surplus of US$ 8.1 billion, resulting from earnings of US$ 9.61 billion in exports and costs of US$ 1.51 billion in imports. The figures were reported by Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply.

Soy (beans, meal, and oil) topped the list of exports, accounting for 41% of sales amount – it sold US$ 3.94 billion in July, 0.3% less than in the same month of 2013. Shipments amounted to 7.44 million tons, up 0.8% compared to July 2013.

The second leading export was meat, with sales of US$ 1.66 billion, 14% up from July 2013. Poultry led the group with sales of US$ 772 million, followed by beef exports which amounted to US$ 690 million. Pork exports totaled US$ 139 million.

The sugar-ethanol group was the third largest exporting sector in July with US$ 1.05 billion in sales and shipments of 2.56 million tons. Other major exports include forest products and coffee. Pulp and paper lead forest products with earnings of $652 million. In the coffee sector, exports totaled $583 million, 65.2% up from July 2013.

ABr/MP

At the PSDB convention held in Brasilia, Senator Neves received the support from 521 of the 535 delegates including the main leaders of the party, among which former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso who sponsored him and in a much applauded speech called on all members to “leave aside personal interests” and close ranks behind the new president, and most probably the 2014 candidate.

“The time of change, of a better future under the command of Neves and with your unanimous support has arrived,” said Cardoso in support of the hopeful who has a long political career and comes from a family with strong political background.

Neves has been a member of the Lower House from 1997 to 2002; he was president of that house in 2001/2002 and governor of Minas Gerais from 2003 to 2010. Minas Gerais is the second largest electoral constituency in Brazil and is his family turf.

His grandfather, Tancredo Neves, was an articulate politician who worked for the transition from the military dictatorship (1964/1985) to democracy and was elected president in 1985. However he died before taking office.

Neves main competitors in the party, José Serra former governor of Sao Paulo and defeated twice in his presidential bid, in 2002 by Lula and in 2010 by Dilma Rousseff pledged he would be in the same side as Neves in 2014. Geraldo Alckmin, Sao Paulo governor and who lost to Lula in 2006 offered the support of São Paulo but did not expand.

In his speech Neves criticized President Rousseff and the ruling Workers’ party, which he accused of putting the State at “the service of their power project” and blasted the ruling coalition for its shortcomings in education, health, safety in the streets and the economy.

“It won’t be easy: I’m not deceiving myself, we are not facing a political party, but rather a party that has captured the State and inverted the logics of democracy, with the State at the service of the party and of its power and domination project,” said Neves.

He presented PSDB as the “party of ethics,” of economic stability, of the transfer of national income to the poor and needy, of fiscal responsibility and of the privatizations that were good for Brazil.

Neves finally recalled his grandfather, Tancredo, a man of wise counseling who use to say that “in the service of the country and fatherland, there will always be space for everybody. That is why we are here today, to build new times for Brazil”.

Mercopress

Make no mistake; abstentions from the democratic electoral process necessarily contribute to the election of the winning candidate. In this case, Marina chose to avoid the “dirty,” but essentially democratic deal making of the second round to sustain her programmatic message of environmental protection and sustainable development.

However, even this decision has measurable consequences that will impact the second round voting in important ways that she could expect. Serra cannot overtake Dilma’s commanding lead in the first round voting without a massive migration of Marina’s voters to his ticket in the second round on October 31.

Do the math; Serra needs more than 14.5 million more votes to eclipse Dilma’s first round performance; or nearly 74 percent of Marina’s voters to join his ranks. According to DataFolha’s Oct. 21 opinion poll, only 46 percent of Marina’s voters intend to vote for Serra, five points less than the week before.

It is unlikely that Serra can attract enough second round support given Marina’s long and distinguished history with the PT and service as Minister of the Environment (2003-2008) under much of President Lula’s successful government. Moreover, it is improbable that Dilma’s voters will flip for Serra down the stretch, despite efforts by Veja and the Folha de S. Paulo to exaggerate scandals associated with Dilma’s replacement as Minister of the Casa Civil (chief of staff) of the Presidency.

Indeed, as the Green Party Vice-President Alfredo Sirkis points out, Dilma’s response to Marina’s open letter to both candidates identified a high level of compatibility between the two candidates’ environmental and social policy proposals, with a few notable exceptions including Dilma’s opposition to the establishment of a regulatory agency to enforce the national climate change policy.

Serra did not even respond, allowing PSDB President Sergio Guerra to invite the Greens to collaborate while noting his less than convincing short list of policy convergence. A neutral observer could conclude that important elements of Serra’s own electoral coalition would reject any “pragmatic” deal to incorporate Marina and the Greens into the campaign or a would be Serra administration in 2011.

Marina defended her decision by arguing that both the PT and PSDB have submerged Brazilian democracy into a shallow pragmatism that impoverishes the policy debate and suffocates the construction of a peaceful political culture centered on fusing different and sometimes divergent visions and policy prescriptions to achieve the public interest.

Speaking for the Green party, Sirkis states, “We refuse to participate in the second round’s negotiations where candidates promise governmental offices and influence in exchange for electoral support. Rather, we will try to steer the second round toward a debate on government programs and policy platforms.”

Yet, it is not clear that either Marina or her Green party have really side stepped the deal making of electoral democracy altogether. The Green party’s performance in federal congressional elections was disappointing given Marina’s strong third place finish. In all, the party only increased its number of federal deputies from 14 to 15 (out of 513 total) and failed to elect one senator (and lost Marina Silva’s seat to the campaign).

Therefore, the Green party had little to offer either one of the candidates at the federal legislative level, but could have amplified the influence of its small caucus by directly participating in either one of the second round campaigns.

Of course this raises the question; did either Dilma or Serra even want the Greens in their respective political coalitions? The decision to abstain now allows each individual Green party legislator to cut his or her own deals within the Chamber of Deputies and with the executive branch, but without the transparency or accountability inherent to an official party endorsement.

Marina’s decision and her open letter encouraging both candidates to adopt her message (as Senator Cristovam Buarque reports in Brazzil’s piece “Instead of Hoping for Marina’s Nod Brazil Candidates Should Fulfill Marina’s Hopes” ) is as pragmatic as those of her first round adversaries, although without the scrutiny or transparency.

Without a strong Green party caucus in the congress, Marina made a personal-political decision to rise above the second round fray in hopes of exalting her national leadership for future opportunities that have less to do with her party than with her own personal-political aspirations.

Remember, despite Marina’s electoral popularity the Green party did not make commensurate advances at the national level. It is critical to note that Marina and the Green party provide important scientific and policy expertise for a host of environmental and development issues at every level of Brazilian government. However, Marina’s decision to abstain further marginalizes this small, but critical policy leadership group from the national policymaking processes associated with environmental protection, sustainable development, and yes, even political reform!

In this sense, Marina’s decision was a pragmatic one, not on behalf of her party or nation, but for her own future political opportunities. By abstaining she leaves the door open to making her own deal, without the limelight or fanfare, at a place and time of her own choosing. She should not be criticized for this move, but neither should Dilma or Serra be criticized for such deal making to construct a winning electoral margin and governing coalition.

Marina has a bright future, albeit uncertain at this juncture. The Green party will play a tertiary role in legislative policymaking. Dilma will win the second round and her government will demonstrate an incremental and determined approach to balancing the need for economic growth with the demand for environmental protection.

Serra will lose the presidential race for the second time. But the biggest loss is Marina’s decision to play it deft and pragmatic for herself without strengthening her party or the policymaking process after all the votes are counted.

Mark S. Langevin, Ph.D. is Director of BrazilWorks (www.BrazilWorks.org), Associate Researcher at the Centro Universitário de Brasília (UniCEUB), adjunct Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland-University College, and regular contributor to Brazzil and the Inter-American Dialogue’s Latin American Advisor. He can be reached at Mark.brazilworks@gmail.com.

As that is more than the combined total of all other candidates (who have 44%), if these numbers are reflected in the real election she will be elected on October 3, without a need for a runoff election on October 31.

Dilma, an economist/technocrat who has never run for elective office before, was handpicked by Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to be his successor. She became the minister of Mines and Energy when Lula took office in 2003, having served in similar posts in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. In 2005, she became Lula’s Chief of Staff.

According to the president of the CNT, Clésio Andrade, “It looks like Dilma will win without a runoff if the tendencies the latest poll found continue. She has the advantage of the popularity of the Lula government, the positive results of economic and social programs, which have been transferred to her by the voters although she was largely unknown a few months ago.

“She has been effectively presented as Lula’s right-hand, a person responsible for much of the progress made by the government. The poll results show that the voters want continuity.”

The poll tendencies mentioned by Andrade, besides the strong transfer of Lula’s popularity and approval ratings to Dilma, also include the rejection factor. The candidate with the highest rejection rating is Marina Silva (the Green Party) at 47.9%. José Serra, the opposition PSDB candidate, has 40.7%, and Dilma is third with 28.9%.

Andrade points out that the tide in favor of Dilma started to turn at the beginning of August when voters began identifying Dilma as Lula’s candidate and has been strongly reinforced since by the free campaign commercials on radio and TV. Not really free, as the government will shell out 890 million reais (US$ 502 million) to radio and TV stations for 200 minutes each day (100 on radio and 100 on TV) that they are required by law to broadcast.

The CNT/Sensus poll shows that Dilma leads in four of the five regions of Brazil. Serra is ahead only in the South (the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná), where he has 47.8%, and Dilma 35.7%.

In the North and Central West, Dilma has 45%, Serra 22.5%, Marina 7.6%, with undecided 20.5%. In the Northeast, Dilma has 62.1%, Serra 19.8% and Marina 6.4%., undecided 11.1%.

In the Southeast, Dilma has come from behind to lead with 39.2%, Serra 27.6% and Marina 9.7%, undecided 21.8%.

The CNT/Sensus poll interviewed 2,000 people in 136 municipalities in 24 states between August 20 and 22. The poll has a margin of error of give or take 2.2 percentage points.

In the spontaneous vote, Dilma got 37.2% and Serra 21.2% – a difference of 16 percentage points. In the simulated vote, Dilma got 46% and Serra 28.1%. In a runoff, Dilma would win with 52.9%, compared to 34% for Serra.

A curious footnote to this election is that president Lula, although he is not running, continues to pick up around 5% of the votes in many of the CNT/Sensus polls.

ABr

However, there are another seven candidates for president, and all of them are men. Known as “nanicos” (midgets) they are from small political parties. So, what starts out looking very good from a female point of view soon turns sour.

Women may make up more than 50% of the electorate, and 66% of the top candidates in this election, but overall they are only 20% of the candidates. It is the prevailing situation in the 2010 Brazilian elections.

“Women have distinct difficulties at the party level in Brazil,” says Lucia Avelar of the University of Brasília who did a study on the subject.

“They may be a candidate, but when it comes to funding and exposure (Brazilian candidates get free time on radio and TV) they always get shortchanged.”

There has undoubtedly been an increase in women in politics. For example, female members of party board of directors in the three parties that have existed since the 1980s, have risen from four in the PDT to 62, and eight to 26 in the PT.

In 1981, the PMDB did not have any woman on its board, today it has 11. But as a percentage of total board members, the number of women is far less than 50%. In the PT it is just over 30%. In the PDT it is 16% and in the PMDB it is less than 10%.

In Congress, there are 45 female deputies (8.7% of the total) and 10 female senators (12.35%). Out of 27 governors, three are women.

Last week, as the deadline for registering candidates for the October general elections ended, the Federal Election Board (TSE) announced that a total of 21.393 registrations were granted, of which 4,495 were women.

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal) reports that the situation is similar in the rest of the continent.

Some countries have quotas for women (varying from 20% in Paraguay to 45% in Ecuador). In Brazil, parties are supposed to reserve 30% of the places on tickets for women candidates.

ABr

The agreement was reached during a friendly dinner at the presidential residence in Brazilian capital Brasí­lia with the participation of the main leaders of the PMDB and the PT (Workers Party), the president's own party, as well as Rousseff, who is the current chief of staff for the presidency.

PMDB chairman Michel Temer said that the "political agreement" entails support from the conservative party for the candidacy of Ms Rousseff and naming her companion in the presidential ticket.

However Temer added that the PMDB, PT "marriage" must have the approval from both parties' conventions which will take place sometime at the end of 2009 or beginning of next year.

Temer, who is currently president of the Lower House, is mentioned inside PMDB as the most probable name for the second person of the 2010 presidential ticket next to Rousseff.

"The name of the vice president (hopeful) will be decided by political circumstances to be defined next year," said Temer who underlined that more important is to bring other parties of the current government coalition in support of Ms Rousseff.

Another ten parties of all sizes, ideological background or representing interest group make up the coalition which supports Lula.

"It would be most useful to have a block of parties supporting the candidacy of the minister," pointed out Temer.

PMDB joined the government coalition back in 2005 when Lula's Workers Party was rocked by major scandals involving massive handouts to members of Congress to have bills passed. Since then the PMDB has consolidated as the most influential party in the ruling coalition.

Temer has also managed to make it the strongest electoral force in Brazil which was ratified in the governors' election of 2006 and municipal of 2008.

In 2006 when the PMDB backed the reelection of President Lula, the PMDB won 7 out of 27 governorships and in 2008 took control of 1.201 town halls out of 5.563.

The PMDB also holds the presidency of the Lower House and of the Senate with a most controversial figure, but still very influential, José Sarney, a former president of Brazil.

Congressional sources in Brasí­lia quoted in the press anticipate that at least five of the small parties from the ruling coalition will throw their weight behind Ms Rousseff.

But above all Ms Rousseff will be "Lula's candidate", since he happens to be the most popular president in recent Brazilian history with a public opinion polls sustained support of almost 80%, and could easily have forced a constitutional amendment to have him elected for a third consecutive mandate.

Mercopress

"Mayors play a leading role and I'm not interested in knowing to which political party they belong, I only want to know who is the mayor because he has the same responsibility as I do in helping to solve people's problems," said Lula during his weekly radio program "Breakfast with the President".

On Sunday there was an only  winner, "the Brazilian people who freely elected their candidates," underlined the president.

Lula, who is riding on a popularity rating close to 80%, recalled that during the electoral campaign, "not one single candidate criticized me" and they all underlined the good relations between the federal government and local town halls.

"I'm convinced this association will be even closer." he emphasized.

However the big cooperation test will be in São Paulo where conservative incumbent Gilberto Kassab defeated with 60.7% of the votes Lula's Workers' Party candidate Martha Suplicy who only managed 39.3% in the Sunday run off.

Kassab two great allies in the victory were former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and current São Paulo governor José Serra, virtually the conservative presidential hopeful for 2010.

This was particularly difficult for Lula da Silva since he only campaigned strongly for Ms Suplicy in São Paulo.

In Rio do Janeiro, which together with São Paulo and Belo Horizonte are the core of political and economic power in Brazil, Eduardo Paes from the centrist party Brazilian Democratic Movement, PMDB, and a coalition ally of Lula, narrowly defeated the "green party" candidate Fernando Gabeira.

However in Belo Horizonte, the Workers' Party and conservatives managed to share victory with Mário Lacerda. He garnered 59.1% of the vote and Leonardo Quintão from PMDB, 40.9% in the run off.

The Workers' Party also suffered another two major setbacks. In Porto Alegre, capital of Rio Grande do Sul, the incumbent Jose Fogaça from the PMDB defeated overwhelmingly Lula's candidate Maria do Rosário.

In Salvador, Bahia, the incumbent mayor João Henrique from the PMDB retained Town Hall defeating the Workers' Party Walter Pinheiro.

Overall next January the Workers Party will take control of 554 cities, of which six are state capitals, with the big loss of São Paulo.

Conservative PSDB emerged with 778 cities, three state capitals and with Kassab overwhelming re-election victory in São Paulo.

The Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, PMDB, won in 1,205 mayoral races, including five state capitals, a 14% jump.

In practical terms this means that the ruling coalition has won nearly two-thirds (63%) of the mayoral races in Sunday's elections.

Mercopress

Despite a series of corruption scandals involving Lula’s inner circle and widespread disillusionment with his pro-business policies, Lula is still the overwhelming favorite. But there’s a chance he may be forced into a second-round runoff as the result of the strong campaign by left-wing Senator Heloísa Helena.

Helena was among several legislators expelled from Lula’s Workers Party (PT, according to its initials in Portuguese) in 2003 for challenging the government’s turn to the right. She has the support of the Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSOL), made up of groupings and individuals who were expelled from or quit the PT, as well as the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) and the Trotskyist Unified Socialist Workers Party (PSTU).

Her campaign platform outlines goals for Brazilian society once proposed by the PT – an aggressive plan to redistribute wealth from the super rich who dominate Brazilian society, and the radical redistribution of the vast rural latifundia, or landholdings, to landless rural workers.

When Lula won the presidential elections in late 2002, Brazil’s workers and poor looked forward to a new era. After a history of extreme social inequality, reinforced by long periods of military dictatorship in the 20th century, Brazil had elected as president a former metalworker and union leader raised in poverty, who became a leader on the left.

But even during the campaign, Lula signaled his direction by choosing as his vice president José Alencar, a textile industry CEO from the right-wing Liberal Party.

Once in office, Lula’s performance pleased Wall Street, Washington and Brazil’s world-class agribusiness interests. As Latin America expert and author James Petras noted, Lula’s early "achievements" included slashing pensions for public-sector workers by 30%, cutting spending for health and education by 5%, and pushing through legislation making it easier to fire workers.

Social spending now runs at US$ 8 billion annually, a threefold increase since Lula took office, but only a fraction of the amount his government has spent on repaying Brazil’s US$ 150 billion in foreign debt, much of which was accumulated during the military dictatorships of the 1980s.

One of the consequences is that Brazil’s Family Allowance cash subsidy for the poor has reached only about a quarter of the 40 million of Brazil’s population of 181 million who live below the poverty line. Meanwhile, high interest rates have engorged bankers’ profits.

Nevertheless, Lula did manage to boost the PT’s vote in the 2004 municipal elections from 12 million to 16 million, nearly doubling the number of mayoralties the party controls, from 187 to 300.

Much of the gains came in the impoverished, rural Northeast, an area still shaped by the enslavement of, and racism against, Afro-Brazilians. These advances for the PT were not, however, the result of long-promised land reform.

Despite Lula’s pledge that 100,000 families would receive land each year – a small enough number itself – the total has only been 25,000 annually, compared to the average of 48,000 families per year who got land under the previous neoliberal government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Rather the PT’s gains in the North came by using the Family Allowance program to promote clientelism and patronage, thereby outflanking some traditional parties of the big landowners, while making alliances with others. Nevertheless, João Pedro Stédile, leader of the Landless Workers Movement (MST), continues to support Lula as a "lesser evil."

At the same time, the PT’s traditional vote in the industrial heartlands around São Paulo dropped off. This disillusionment was caused not only by Lula’s conservative polices, but a series of scandals that have engulfed the heart of the PT apparatus.

In the latest episode, two PT officials were arrested with currency worth US$ 792,000, allegedly intended for payoffs. The PT was also found to have funneled money to right-wing legislators to buy their votes in the Brazilian Congress.

Lula seems to have recovered from the scandal by distancing himself from the PT and remaining above the fray in the presidential campaign, refusing to participate in debates.

Internationally, Lula is a reliable collaborator with the U.S. While he invokes populist slogans against the Free Trade Area of the Americas proposed by the U.S., this reflects the agenda of Brazil’s corporate agricultural exporters, who want an end to U.S. farm subsidies as the precondition for any deal.

Tellingly, Brazil signed on to help lead the United Nations-authorized occupation of Haiti after the U.S.-backed coup ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. More recently, Lula has curbed the ambitions of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to create an anti-U.S. economic bloc in South America.

And Lula has pressured Bolivian President Evo Morales to moderate his plan to nationalize Bolivia’s hydrocarbon resources, in which Brazil’s Petrobras oil company has a substantial stake – with Brazil playing a "subimperialist" role for the U.S., as radical journalist Raúl Zibechi put it.

As James Petras concludes, "The empirical data on all the key indicators demonstrate that Lula fits closer to the profile of a right-wing neoliberal politician rather than a ‘center-leftist’ president."

Heloísa Helena

It is in this context that Heloísa Helena’s presidential candidacy emerged on Brazil’s left. A nurse and longtime activist for agrarian reform, Helena was elected as federal senator from the poor Northeastern state of Alagoas on the PT ticket in 1998.

Soon after Lula took office, Helena was among several legislators expelled for opposing the PT’s right turn. She became a founder of PSOL. This year, the PCB and the PSTU joined PSOL in an electoral front, giving Helena’s presidential campaign a broader activist base.

Recent opinion polls put Helena’s standing at between 7 to 10%, compared to less than 30% for the conservative Geraldo Alckmin of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party and around 50% for Lula. Lula needs over 50% to avoid a second-round runoff.

Helena’s showing is especially impressive considering the overwhelming financial advantages of Lula and Alckmin. As speculation mounted in August that Helena could pass Alckmin for second place in the first round of the election, the Brazilian corporate media drastically curtailed coverage of her campaign.

Even if Lula does win on the first round, Helena’s campaign has already provided the Brazilian left with a crucial national profile. This, in turn, can give a boost to activism by landless workers’ groups to the left of the MST – and, in the labor movement, to the Conlutas grouping of militant trade unions opposed to Lula’s policies.

Helena has, however, been criticized on the left for her personal opposition to abortion. But, in a recent press conference, she stressed that she is against measures to criminalize women who have the procedure.

Helena’s campaign does put forward the need for a socialist alternative. Lula, she told an interviewer recently, "cowardly kneels before capital, and afterward goes to Venezuela or Africa with financial aid with the aim of cleaning up his image.

"What we want is the democratization of the wealth, culture, health and education. We are not heirs of the tradition of totalitarian European socialism. I do not defend socialism by decree. I do not want totalitarian socialism, nor only capitalist thinking. In Brazil, capitalism has been very ugly, cruel and violent."

As Pedro Fuentes, a leading member of the PSOL put it in an interview, Helena’s campaign "represents a struggle against the treason of the PT, the struggle against corruption, the struggle on behalf of the exploited. In addition, she’s a woman of the Northeast, the poorest region of the country."

A strong electoral result for Helena, he said, "would affirm a socialist alternative in Brazil after the crisis in the PT. It would recover from and supercede the PT as a new tool of struggle, which would be important for Brazil and also in the Latin American context."

Lee Sustar is a regular contributor to Counter Punch and the Socialist Worker. He can be reached at: lsustar@ameritech.net.

This article appeared originally in the Socialist Worker – www.socialistworker.org.