Support From Brazil's Poor Gives Lula Edge in Election

Marlene Silva, a kitchen worker in a Sao Paulo restaurant, cites an increase in her spending power in explaining her preference for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. (By Monte Reel -- The Washington Post)

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Sept. 30 -- The dividing lines that will determine Brazil's presidential election on Sunday are extraordinarily clear, as plainly visible as the swinging doors that separate a restaurant's dining room from its kitchen.

At a buffet lunch in a middle-class neighborhood, almost all of the cooks who ride buses for hours every day to toil in a steamy kitchen said they will vote to reelect President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. On the other side of the doors, almost all of the diners said they planned to vote against him.

Lula is expected to coast to victory for this reason: In Latin America's largest democracy, a lot more people live like the cooks than live like the customers.

Although Lula always has portrayed himself as a champion of the downtrodden, the nature of his electoral support this year is different from what it was four years ago. Then, backing among more than 50 percent of middle-class voters was the key that allowed the longtime labor union leader to become president. That support has plummeted to about 35 percent this year, while backing among those earning less than $340 per month -- a minority of whom voted for Lula the first time around -- has soared to almost 60 percent.

Lula won in 2002 during a second-round runoff. He could avoid a late-October runoff this time by getting a majority of the vote Sunday. This week's opinion polls showed Lula favored by just over 50 percent, and his closest challenger -- former Sao Paulo state governor Geraldo Alckmin -- with around 30 percent.

Thanks in large part to minimum-wage hikes and an increase in social programs providing cash to poor families who agree to keep their children in school, the poor have seen their spending power rise by about 28 percent. The Brazilian currency, the real, has gained 60 percent on the dollar since Lula has been president, which has helped keep prices down. The proportion of the population living in poverty has fallen from about 24 percent to about 18.5 percent over the past four years.

"For 12 years, my husband and I have been trying to rebuild our house, and this month we were able to finish because now we can afford cement," said Marlene Silva, 34, who scrubbed chrome counter tops in the kitchen. Helio Helene, a 53-year-old man sweeping the floor nearby, added: "My family used to eat the cheap brands of rice because a package of the good quality rice used to cost 18 reals [about $8.60]. Now the same rice costs 10 reals, so we eat the good brands."

The middle and upper classes don't have stories that are rooted so strongly in everyday life. They talk about double-digit interest rates and a reluctance by Lula to tackle overdue reforms in the banking sector and the social security system. If the economy doesn't grow faster than its current annual pace of about 3.5 percent, they argue, social programs will collapse and leave everyone -- including the poor -- worse off than before.

"Lula is a good agitator, but he's not a good administrator," said Marcelo Naumann Boufleur, 28, one of the restaurant's diners, who works for a video production company. "Interest rates are so high that people are starting to lose jobs -- there's no investment because of that."

When Lula was elected, some financial analysts feared he might promote populist economic policies that would destabilize financial markets, but he earned early praise for reducing foreign borrowing, amassing foreign reserves and retaining a relatively strict fiscal policy. Now some economists say he hasn't done enough.

"Brazil's economic growth is not as much as the world average, and as a developing country it needs to be much higher," said Aloisio Pessoa de Araújo, an economist with the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro. "We need to do more to diminish the informal sector of the economy, to regulate less and lighten the tax burden on key sectors."

The middle and upper classes -- as well as the newspapers and magazines that they read -- have paid close attention to a series of corruption scandals that have implicated Lula's administration in recent months. On Saturday, the front pages of the country's largest newspapers featured photos of stacks of cash allegedly paid by a Lula campaign aide for a dossier containing damaging information about Lula's political rivals. It follows allegations of vote-buying in the National Congress last year among members of Lula's party, which prompted some of the president's closest advisers to resign or be fired.