BRAZIL: Brazil's left-wing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, looked virtually guaranteed of a second term in power last night, a month after corruption allegations dashed his chances of a first-round win.
Yesterday, as 126 million Brazilians poured into polling stations across the country, opinion polls gave the incumbent, popularly known as Lula, a 21 per cent lead over his opponent, Geraldo Alckmin of the Social Democratic Party.
Supporters waiting outside the president's apartment in Sao Bernardo do Campo greeted their leader with cheers of "You've already won", when Lula appeared on his balcony yesterday morning before voting.
In the lead-up to the second round, the dispute between Lula and Mr Alckmin became increasingly acrimonious with the candidates locking swords over everything from Mr Alckmin's role in outbreaks of organised crime to the cost of Lula's presidential jet.
Lula has described his rival as the candidate of the rich elites, whilst Mr Alckmin accuses Brazil's first working-class leader of being a populist who is plotting to sell the Amazon to foreign companies.
During a highly charged TV debate on Friday, Lula likened his opponent to the Portuguese colonists who came from Europe to exploit Brazilian assets.
"They have run this country for 500 years," Lula said.
Mr Alckmin - a notoriously bland technocrat nicknamed chuchu (a tasteless green vegetable) - accused the president of incompetence and dishonesty over a series of corruption scandals involving close allies.
In recent weeks, however, Lula has managed to steer the political agenda away from graft allegations, instead focusing on his government's achievements in reducing poverty.
In Brazil's impoverished rural areas, where government officials say welfare projects like Bolsa Familia (Family Grant) have reached around 11 million families, such a message has struck a chord.
"No president has ever done so much for the poor," said Antonio Ferreira de Almeida Silva, a rural workers' leader in the isolated south of the Amazonian state of Para. "No, it hasn't been perfect, but at least he wants to help us."
Aldo Fornazieri, a political scientist from the Sao Paulo Foundation of Sociology and Politics, said Lula's main advantage was that he was seen as being "on the side of the poor".
"The crisis hurt him a bit, of course, but Lula was thrown from the centre of the storm," he said.
Meanwhile, cabinet members have promised a dramatic post-election change in economic policy. The minister for institutional relations, Tarso Genro, yesterday told reporters to expect a departure from an orthodox economic policy widely criticised by left-wingers who had hoped for more radical change following Lula's historic election in 2002.
"The Palocci era is over in Brazil," Mr Genro said, in reference to Antonio Palocci, Lula's former finance minister, who was widely seen as the architect of Brazil's conservative economic policy.