Lula confident of election win

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva looked confident of re-election in yesterday's vote as opinion polls showed Brazilians shrugging off corruption scandals and repaying him for helping the poor.

About 125 million voters were registered to cast ballots across the world's fourth-largest democracy, from hamlets in the Amazon rainforest to the concrete jungle and tough slums of the big cities.

Voting closed in most of the country except the far west at 5 p.m. (3 p.m. EST/2000 GMT) and final results were expected by midnight.

Opinion polls released on the eve of the contest showed Mr Lula taking 61 per cent of the vote against 39 per cent for former Sao Paulo state Governor Geraldo Alckmin of the centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party.

"Lula is not indebted to the rich. He owes his success to the common Brazilian," said photographer Euler Peixoto, 48, who voted in a middle-class district of the business capital Sao Paulo. "I want someone like that as my president."

Mr Lula, 61, spoke like a winner when he turned up to vote in the factory town of Sao Bernardo do Campo, where he began in politics as a union leader opposing a military dictatorship.

He promised to open a dialogue with the opposition. "We are going to sew up all the alliances needed so people can be calm and we can approve all the projects that Brazil needs," he told reporters.

Mr Alckmin, voting in Sao Paulo with former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and newly-elected state Governor Jose Serra at his side, said he still believed the opinion polls could be wrong.

Mr Lula fell shy of an absolute majority in an October 1 vote against a wider field after an attempted smear campaign by his Workers' Party against opposition candidates backfired. Support among the lower classes, who have benefited from more jobs as well as welfare programs during his four-year term, is the key to Mr Lula's comeback.

Scandals over vote-buying and bribery in the past few years had threatened to torpedo Mr Lula's political career, and they still weighed on many minds, especially among the rich and better-educated Brazilians.

But voters canvassed by Reuters reporters said violent crime, education and heath costs were all vital issues.

"Here, violence is the biggest problem," said Lourdes Oliveira, a 34-year-old nurse in the Rocinha shantytown, or favela, in Rio de Janeiro.

"I believe Lula when he says only education can take youngsters away from the streets and from drug trafficking."

In Sao Paulo's plush Higienopolis district, Manuela Carvalhaes, a 25-year-old lawyer, said she picked Alckmin.

"He is better prepared to create a higher level of economic growth that Brazil has lacked for some time," she said.

Mr Lula has won plaudits for stabilising the economy of Latin America's largest country but the growth needed to overcome its social inequalities and to maintain its challenge to emerging market rivals India and China is still elusive.

Cabinet minister Tarso Genro said yesterday Mr Lula would set a growth target of at least five per cent next year.

Several analysts said Mr Lula could emerge stronger from the second round by winning a strong mandate, which will help him push through business-friendly reforms.