Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva 2006
Post
02/10/06, Harold Olmos, Brazil's leader forced into run-off election, (Source).
01/10/06, Fabio Alves & Andrew Barden, Lula Leads in Brazil Election, May Face Runoff, (Source).
01/10/06, Terra/JB Online, Parcial: Lula tem 48,76% e Alckmin tem 41,43%, (Source).
01/10/06, Reuters, Com quase 94% de apuração, Lula cai para 49,06%, (Source).
01/10/06, Fabio Alves & Andrew Barden, Lula Leads in Brazil Election, May Face Runoff, (Back).
Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva led challenger Geraldo Alckmin in an early count of ballots from today's election and was about 1 percentage point short of avoiding a runoff.
Lula, 60, won 49.6 percent of the vote, based on 80 percent of ballots counted, electoral authorities said tonight. Alckmin, 53, a former governor of Sao Paulo, won 40.6 percent of the vote, initial results showed.
``I still expect Lula to win the election relatively easy in the second round,'' Riordan Roett, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University and chairman of its western hemisphere program, said in a phone interview from Baltimore.
Support for Lula dropped in the final opinion poll taken yesterday after Brazilian media, including Globo television and Estado do Sao Paulo newspaper, published photos of money allegedly intended to be used by the government to influence the outcome of the election.
Other opposition candidates, Heloisa Helena, won 6.75 percent of the vote and Cristovam Buarque took 2.8 percent, according to the preliminary results.
`Emotional Tone'
``The emotional tone that took over the country on the eve of the election increased the chances of Lula going to a run-off ballot,'' said Jose Eduardo Cardozo, 47, a lower house representative seeking re-election from the governing Workers' Party, in an interview in Sao Paulo. ``The main problem in Lula's campaign was the scandals that hit'' the Workers' Party leadership.
An Ibope exit poll released on Globo television showed Lula winning 50 percent of the vote to Alckmin's 38 percent. All polls before the election showed Lula would win a second-term in the run-off.
``It's much closer than polls were indicating and the latest political scandals had an large impact in the final days of the campaign,'' said Alexandre Barros, president of Early Warning, a Brasilia-based political-risk company said in a telephone interview from Belo Horizonte.
Brazil's 126 million voters cast ballots to choose the president, 513 lower house deputies, 27 senators, 27 governors and 1,059 state legislators.
Markets
Stocks and bonds likely would fall should results show Lula needs to go a second-round vote because the final outcome of the election would still be several weeks away, said Emy Shayo, an economist at Bear Stearns.
``We're confident that we will still win the first round, but if that doesn't happen we'll win in the second round thanks to the support we've accumulated,'' Finance Minister Guido Mantega told reporters on his way into the presidential residence in Brasilia, where Lula watched the returns.
The election is Alckmin's first attempt to win the presidency, while Lula is running for the fifth time. Lula lost three presidential elections before being elected in 2002 with 61 percent in a second round of voting. Lula lost to Fernando Collor de Melo in 1990, and then to Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 1994 and 1998.
Since 1990, two of Brazil's elections have been decided in the first round and two elections went to a runoff.
Investigations
Brazil's electoral court said on Sept. 19 that it would investigate allegations Lula was involved with attempts by an aide to buy documents allegedly showing Alckmin and Jose Serra, who was elected governor of Sao Paulo yesterday, took bribes related to health-care contracts. A coalition of parties that support Alckmin called for the probe.
The stacks of money ``were photographed from a very curious angle that gave the impression it was seven-feet tall,'' Barros said. ``This is something that definitely has an impact for the common voter, because he looks at it and says a portion of that is his.''
In 2005, an investigation into vote buying in Congress led the lower house ethics committee to recommend expulsion of 11 deputies. In August, Congress started an investigation into allegations that 69 deputies had accepted bribes in connection with health-care contracts. In the past two years, Congress has investigated a record 92 lawmakers for suspected corruption.
Lula has promised to clamp down on corruption by tightening controls over public spending and making more information about government finances and decision-making available to the public. He said he wants to reduce the number of political parties, introduce rules that would force lawmakers to vote in line with their party leadership and water down laws that protect legislators and government officials from prosecution.
To contact the reporters on this story: Andrew J. Barden in Sao Paulo barden@bloomberg.net Fabio Alves in Brasilia at Falves3@bloomberg.net
01/10/06, Terra/JB Online, Parcial: Lula tem 48,76% e Alckmin tem 41,43%, (Back).
BRASÍLIA - Com 65,17% da apuração concluída no país, o presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) aparece com 48,76% dos votos válidos, seguido por Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB), com 41,43%.
A senadora Heloísa Helena (PSOL) conta com 6,65% dos votos e o senador Cristovam Buarque (PDT), com 2,89%. Os demais candidatos tinham 0,27% dos votos.
A Região Sul já tem 94,76 por cento da apuração concluída. Lá o tucano tem 55,04 por cento dos votos válidos, contra 34,73% de Lula.
Já no Nordeste, onde o petista tinha 66,41% dos votos válidos contra 26,09% de Alckmin, tinham sido apurados 69,64% do total.
A Região Sudeste, que tem o maior colégio eleitoral do país, tinha apenas 49,49 por cento da apuração concluída. Lula assumiu o primeiro lugar, com 44,55%, seguido por Alckmin com 43,93%.
01/10/06, Reuters, Com quase 94% de apuração, Lula cai para 49,06%, (Back).
BRASÍLIA (Reuters) - Com 93,99 por cento da apuração concluída no país, o presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) tem 49,06 por cento dos votos válidos. Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB) está com 41,11 por cento.
A senadora Heloísa Helena (PSOL) contabiliza 6,87 por cento dos votos e o senador Cristovam Buarque (PDT) tem 2,70 por cento.
02/10/06, Harold Olmos, Brazil's leader forced into run-off election, (Back).
Brazil's leftist president faces a run-off for a second term after voters denied him an outright victory amid last-minute allegations that his party engaged in a scheme of electoral corruption and dirty tricks.
The 29 October run-off was announced late last night by election authorities after 99 percent of the vote had been counted, with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva getting 48.7 percent compared to 41.6 percent for the center-right Geraldo Alckmin, Sao Paulo state's former governor.
It was a stunning setback for Silva, less than a week after polls predicted he would trounce Alckmin with 59 percent of the vote — far more than the 50 percent plus one vote needed to win the contest in the first round.
A beaming Alckmin emerged from his apartment in Sao Paulo shortly after midnight Monday to thank Brazilians "who rooted and voted for me."
"I'm heading to the second round with a great chance of winning the election," Alckmin told reporters.
Although Silva said earlier Sunday he had been confident of a first-round victory, his campaign manager, Marco Aurelio Garcia, said the president and his campaign staff "always prepared ourselves for a two-round election."
"We came up just short," added Tarso Genro, Silva's top political adviser.
Silva saw his once-commanding lead plummet on the eve of the vote as his Workers' Party was battered by allegations that party officials tried to pay US$770,000 for a mysterious dossier containing documents, photos and DVDS apparently linking Sao Paulo gubernatorial candidate Jose Serra to graft when he was health minister between 1998 and 2002.
Major newspapers ran front-page photos over the weekend showing piles of money allegedly meant to buy information showing claims linking Serra to graft.
Six members of Lula's party, including an old friend who ran his personal security detail, face arrest warrants for their alleged roles in efforts to buy the damaging information and Silva fired his campaign manager days before the election. The president has denied knowledge of any wrongdoing.
Serra belongs to Alckmin's party and lost the presidency to Silva in 2002 but won the race Sunday night to become Sao Paulo state governor, handily beating the Workers' Party candidate.
Silva's party claimed that Alckmin's supporters were involved in leaking the photos to the media, and filed a complaint Sunday with a judge demanding that Alckmin's candidacy be declared invalid. The judge said he would consider the case. Alckmin's campaign has denied involvement.
Silva's party has also being dogged by a campaign financing scandal and a bribes-for-votes scheme in which the government allegedly paid legislators for support in Congress. Silva wasn't directly implicated, but some of his top aides were forced to resign.
Alckmin, of the Social Democracy Party, voted Sunday in Sao Paulo's upscale neighborhood of Morumbi.
While Silva was also criticized for failing to appear in a presidential debate last Thursday night, the corruption allegations were a deciding factor for many voters.
"I'm not going to tell you who I voted for, because the vote is secret," said Adelaide Venissato, a 53-year-old woman who owns a clothing store. "But I will tell you who I didn't vote for. I didn't vote for Lula. We expected so much and we got very little in terms of security and clean government."
But others seemed willing to overlook the corruption allegations because they feel their lives have gotten better during Silva's four years in office. He has brought a stable economy and social programs that have lifted millions out of poverty.
"I voted for Lula because he worried about workers and the poor," said Waldo Lima Mendonca, a 49-year-old construction worker. "And the best president for a worker is one who used to be a worker."
Silva's efforts to reduce poverty played well in the slums of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
"Zero Hunger," his expanded food-stamp-like program, guarantees about US$30 (¤24) a month to virtually all poor families that vaccinate their children and keep them in school. It distributes US$325 million (¤260 million) a month to 45 million of Brazil's 187 million citizens. The program has helped millions of Brazilians out of poverty, studies show.
More than 126 million Brazilians voted in the election for the president, governors for all 26 states and the federal district, all 513 federal deputies of the lower house and 27 of the 81 Senate seats.
Voting is mandatory in Brazil and those who fail to justify their absence both within Brazil and abroad may be fined.
A poor farmer's son who became a fiery union leader and was later elected as Brazil's first leftist president, Silva surprised many by governing as a moderate once taking office. His deft handling of the economy won him backing on Wall Street and in Brazil's shantytowns. His second-term priorities include reforming the tax and labor rules.
Silva's change in style didn't mean embracing the politics of Washington. He clashed head-on with President Bush over a U.S. proposal to create a continental free-trade area, having termed it a U.S. scheme to "annex" Latin America. Largely because of Brazil's opposition, the free-trade area never took off.
(Back)
01/10/06, Fabio Alves & Andrew Barden, Lula Leads in Brazil Election, May Face Runoff, (Source).
01/10/06, Terra/JB Online, Parcial: Lula tem 48,76% e Alckmin tem 41,43%, (Source).
01/10/06, Reuters, Com quase 94% de apuração, Lula cai para 49,06%, (Source).
01/10/06, Fabio Alves & Andrew Barden, Lula Leads in Brazil Election, May Face Runoff, (Back).
Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva led challenger Geraldo Alckmin in an early count of ballots from today's election and was about 1 percentage point short of avoiding a runoff.
Lula, 60, won 49.6 percent of the vote, based on 80 percent of ballots counted, electoral authorities said tonight. Alckmin, 53, a former governor of Sao Paulo, won 40.6 percent of the vote, initial results showed.
``I still expect Lula to win the election relatively easy in the second round,'' Riordan Roett, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University and chairman of its western hemisphere program, said in a phone interview from Baltimore.
Support for Lula dropped in the final opinion poll taken yesterday after Brazilian media, including Globo television and Estado do Sao Paulo newspaper, published photos of money allegedly intended to be used by the government to influence the outcome of the election.
Other opposition candidates, Heloisa Helena, won 6.75 percent of the vote and Cristovam Buarque took 2.8 percent, according to the preliminary results.
`Emotional Tone'
``The emotional tone that took over the country on the eve of the election increased the chances of Lula going to a run-off ballot,'' said Jose Eduardo Cardozo, 47, a lower house representative seeking re-election from the governing Workers' Party, in an interview in Sao Paulo. ``The main problem in Lula's campaign was the scandals that hit'' the Workers' Party leadership.
An Ibope exit poll released on Globo television showed Lula winning 50 percent of the vote to Alckmin's 38 percent. All polls before the election showed Lula would win a second-term in the run-off.
``It's much closer than polls were indicating and the latest political scandals had an large impact in the final days of the campaign,'' said Alexandre Barros, president of Early Warning, a Brasilia-based political-risk company said in a telephone interview from Belo Horizonte.
Brazil's 126 million voters cast ballots to choose the president, 513 lower house deputies, 27 senators, 27 governors and 1,059 state legislators.
Markets
Stocks and bonds likely would fall should results show Lula needs to go a second-round vote because the final outcome of the election would still be several weeks away, said Emy Shayo, an economist at Bear Stearns.
``We're confident that we will still win the first round, but if that doesn't happen we'll win in the second round thanks to the support we've accumulated,'' Finance Minister Guido Mantega told reporters on his way into the presidential residence in Brasilia, where Lula watched the returns.
The election is Alckmin's first attempt to win the presidency, while Lula is running for the fifth time. Lula lost three presidential elections before being elected in 2002 with 61 percent in a second round of voting. Lula lost to Fernando Collor de Melo in 1990, and then to Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 1994 and 1998.
Since 1990, two of Brazil's elections have been decided in the first round and two elections went to a runoff.
Investigations
Brazil's electoral court said on Sept. 19 that it would investigate allegations Lula was involved with attempts by an aide to buy documents allegedly showing Alckmin and Jose Serra, who was elected governor of Sao Paulo yesterday, took bribes related to health-care contracts. A coalition of parties that support Alckmin called for the probe.
The stacks of money ``were photographed from a very curious angle that gave the impression it was seven-feet tall,'' Barros said. ``This is something that definitely has an impact for the common voter, because he looks at it and says a portion of that is his.''
In 2005, an investigation into vote buying in Congress led the lower house ethics committee to recommend expulsion of 11 deputies. In August, Congress started an investigation into allegations that 69 deputies had accepted bribes in connection with health-care contracts. In the past two years, Congress has investigated a record 92 lawmakers for suspected corruption.
Lula has promised to clamp down on corruption by tightening controls over public spending and making more information about government finances and decision-making available to the public. He said he wants to reduce the number of political parties, introduce rules that would force lawmakers to vote in line with their party leadership and water down laws that protect legislators and government officials from prosecution.
To contact the reporters on this story: Andrew J. Barden in Sao Paulo barden@bloomberg.net Fabio Alves in Brasilia at Falves3@bloomberg.net
01/10/06, Terra/JB Online, Parcial: Lula tem 48,76% e Alckmin tem 41,43%, (Back).
BRASÍLIA - Com 65,17% da apuração concluída no país, o presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) aparece com 48,76% dos votos válidos, seguido por Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB), com 41,43%.
A senadora Heloísa Helena (PSOL) conta com 6,65% dos votos e o senador Cristovam Buarque (PDT), com 2,89%. Os demais candidatos tinham 0,27% dos votos.
A Região Sul já tem 94,76 por cento da apuração concluída. Lá o tucano tem 55,04 por cento dos votos válidos, contra 34,73% de Lula.
Já no Nordeste, onde o petista tinha 66,41% dos votos válidos contra 26,09% de Alckmin, tinham sido apurados 69,64% do total.
A Região Sudeste, que tem o maior colégio eleitoral do país, tinha apenas 49,49 por cento da apuração concluída. Lula assumiu o primeiro lugar, com 44,55%, seguido por Alckmin com 43,93%.
01/10/06, Reuters, Com quase 94% de apuração, Lula cai para 49,06%, (Back).
BRASÍLIA (Reuters) - Com 93,99 por cento da apuração concluída no país, o presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) tem 49,06 por cento dos votos válidos. Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB) está com 41,11 por cento.
A senadora Heloísa Helena (PSOL) contabiliza 6,87 por cento dos votos e o senador Cristovam Buarque (PDT) tem 2,70 por cento.
02/10/06, Harold Olmos, Brazil's leader forced into run-off election, (Back).
Brazil's leftist president faces a run-off for a second term after voters denied him an outright victory amid last-minute allegations that his party engaged in a scheme of electoral corruption and dirty tricks.
The 29 October run-off was announced late last night by election authorities after 99 percent of the vote had been counted, with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva getting 48.7 percent compared to 41.6 percent for the center-right Geraldo Alckmin, Sao Paulo state's former governor.
It was a stunning setback for Silva, less than a week after polls predicted he would trounce Alckmin with 59 percent of the vote — far more than the 50 percent plus one vote needed to win the contest in the first round.
A beaming Alckmin emerged from his apartment in Sao Paulo shortly after midnight Monday to thank Brazilians "who rooted and voted for me."
"I'm heading to the second round with a great chance of winning the election," Alckmin told reporters.
Although Silva said earlier Sunday he had been confident of a first-round victory, his campaign manager, Marco Aurelio Garcia, said the president and his campaign staff "always prepared ourselves for a two-round election."
"We came up just short," added Tarso Genro, Silva's top political adviser.
Silva saw his once-commanding lead plummet on the eve of the vote as his Workers' Party was battered by allegations that party officials tried to pay US$770,000 for a mysterious dossier containing documents, photos and DVDS apparently linking Sao Paulo gubernatorial candidate Jose Serra to graft when he was health minister between 1998 and 2002.
Major newspapers ran front-page photos over the weekend showing piles of money allegedly meant to buy information showing claims linking Serra to graft.
Six members of Lula's party, including an old friend who ran his personal security detail, face arrest warrants for their alleged roles in efforts to buy the damaging information and Silva fired his campaign manager days before the election. The president has denied knowledge of any wrongdoing.
Serra belongs to Alckmin's party and lost the presidency to Silva in 2002 but won the race Sunday night to become Sao Paulo state governor, handily beating the Workers' Party candidate.
Silva's party claimed that Alckmin's supporters were involved in leaking the photos to the media, and filed a complaint Sunday with a judge demanding that Alckmin's candidacy be declared invalid. The judge said he would consider the case. Alckmin's campaign has denied involvement.
Silva's party has also being dogged by a campaign financing scandal and a bribes-for-votes scheme in which the government allegedly paid legislators for support in Congress. Silva wasn't directly implicated, but some of his top aides were forced to resign.
Alckmin, of the Social Democracy Party, voted Sunday in Sao Paulo's upscale neighborhood of Morumbi.
While Silva was also criticized for failing to appear in a presidential debate last Thursday night, the corruption allegations were a deciding factor for many voters.
"I'm not going to tell you who I voted for, because the vote is secret," said Adelaide Venissato, a 53-year-old woman who owns a clothing store. "But I will tell you who I didn't vote for. I didn't vote for Lula. We expected so much and we got very little in terms of security and clean government."
But others seemed willing to overlook the corruption allegations because they feel their lives have gotten better during Silva's four years in office. He has brought a stable economy and social programs that have lifted millions out of poverty.
"I voted for Lula because he worried about workers and the poor," said Waldo Lima Mendonca, a 49-year-old construction worker. "And the best president for a worker is one who used to be a worker."
Silva's efforts to reduce poverty played well in the slums of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
"Zero Hunger," his expanded food-stamp-like program, guarantees about US$30 (¤24) a month to virtually all poor families that vaccinate their children and keep them in school. It distributes US$325 million (¤260 million) a month to 45 million of Brazil's 187 million citizens. The program has helped millions of Brazilians out of poverty, studies show.
More than 126 million Brazilians voted in the election for the president, governors for all 26 states and the federal district, all 513 federal deputies of the lower house and 27 of the 81 Senate seats.
Voting is mandatory in Brazil and those who fail to justify their absence both within Brazil and abroad may be fined.
A poor farmer's son who became a fiery union leader and was later elected as Brazil's first leftist president, Silva surprised many by governing as a moderate once taking office. His deft handling of the economy won him backing on Wall Street and in Brazil's shantytowns. His second-term priorities include reforming the tax and labor rules.
Silva's change in style didn't mean embracing the politics of Washington. He clashed head-on with President Bush over a U.S. proposal to create a continental free-trade area, having termed it a U.S. scheme to "annex" Latin America. Largely because of Brazil's opposition, the free-trade area never took off.
(Back)
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