Brazil split ahead of election

RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) ―Brazil’s electorate is split a week ahead of presidential elections, with polls showing leftist incumbent Dilma Rousseff locked in a dead heat with main rival Marina Silva, who preaches the need for a “new politics.”

A total of 142.8 million voters will cast ballots next Sunday to decide the next leader of the continent-sized nation, the world’s seventh-biggest economy.

Voters will also choose 27 state governors, 513 congressmen, 1,069 regional assembly lawmakers and a third of the senate.

Rousseff, handpicked by her charismatic predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, had been expected to win a second mandate until former Workers Party colleague Marina Silva crashed the party.

Silva became a Socialist Party candidate only after the August death in a plane crash of Eduardo Campos, her former running mate.

Earlier polling had put Rousseff well clear of both Campos and Social Democratic Party candidate Aecio Neves.

That all changed with the arrival of Silva, 56, who served as Lula’s environment minister before switching to the Green Party, and whose 2010 presidential bid netted her 20 million votes, for third place.

This time around, Silva enjoyed a month of polls suggesting a narrow run-off vote victory before the Rousseff camp began a vigorous fight back, with the latest surveys giving Rousseff the lead ahead of a likely second round on Oct. 26.

Yet despite her current upsurge, the scenario is less rosy for Rousseff than four years ago.

The 66-year-old daughter of a Bulgarian entrepreneur donned the presidential sash following eight largely euphoric years under Lula that saw an economic boom help fund a vast range of welfare programs that lifted tens of millions of Brazilians out of poverty.

They joined a burgeoning middle class that is now showing its frustration with rising costs of living as well as political corruption.