Brazil getsits firstfemaleleader

Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s first female leader, will head a country in the midst of an economic and political boom when she takes office on January 1.

With nearly 95 per cent of the ballots counted, Ms Rousseff had 55.6 per cent compared with 44.4 per cent for her centrist rival, Jose Serra, the electoral court said.

Ms Rousseff, 62, the hand-chosen candidate of wildly popular President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, won by cementing her image to Mr Silva’s, whose policies she promised to continue.

She will lead a nation on the rise, a country that will host the 2014 football World Cup and that is expected to be the globe’s fifth-largest economy by the time it hosts the 2016 Olympics. It has also recently discovered huge oil reserves off its coast.

Ms Rousseff was already speaking like a president-elect when she cast her vote earlier yesterday. “Starting tomorrow we begin a new stage of democracy,” she said in the southern city of Porto Alegre. “I will rule for everyone, speak with all Brazilians, without exception.”

Mr Silva used his 80 per cent approval ratings to campaign incessantly for Ms Rousseff, his former chief of staff and political protege. She has never held elected office and lacks the charisma that transformed Mr Silva from a one-time shoe-shine boy into one of the world’s most popular leaders.

Mr Silva was barred by the constitution from running for a third consecutive four-year term. He has played down talk in Brazil’s Press that he is setting himself up for a new run at the presidency in 2014, which would be legal.

“If Lula ran for president 10 times, I would vote for him 10 times,” said Marisa Santos, 43, selling her home-made jewellery on a Sao Paulo street.

“I’m voting for Dilma, of course, but the truth is it will still be Lula who will lead us.”

Under Brazilian law, voting is mandatory for citizens aged 18 to 70. Not doing so could result in a small fine and make it impossible to obtain a passport or a government job, among other penalties.