Leftist wins Brazil's presidential election

The Associated Press

SAO PAULO, Brazil ­ Former union boss Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won Brazil's presidential election runoff by a landslide Sunday, marking a historic shift to the left for Latin America's largest country.

With 95 percent of the vote counted, Silva ­ a former shoeshine boy who rose to become the head of a labor union ­ had 61.5 percent to Serra's 38.5 percent, the government Supreme Electoral Tribunal announced.

Silva's criticism of free-market policies is at odds with Washington. His election could complicate President Bush's goal of creating a hemispheric free-trade zone by 2005.               Silva, popularly known as "Lula," just missed a victory in the first-round election on Oct. 6, forcing a runoff against Serra, a former health minister with the ruling party.

Silva's election marks a historic shift to the left for Brazil, which has never elected a leftist president. Its last leftist leader was Joao Goulart, a vice president who assumed power in 1961 when the centrist president resigned.

Brazilians are caught between hopes that Silva will reverse rising unemployment and economic stagnation and fears that the former radical union leader could worsen the country's economic woes.

Brazil's next president will have to pull the world's ninth-biggest economy from the brink of recession, create more jobs and try to lift nearly 50 million Brazilians from poverty.

As he voted in a school in a working class neighborhood of Sao Paulo, Silva spoke of those Brazilians and the millions of others who live a hand-to-mouth existence.

"I want to dedicate this election to the suffering poor of our beloved Brazil," Silva said, as some 200 supporters outside waved Brazilian flags and small plastic banners with the slogan "Now it is Lula."