Brazil: What Lula vote Means

Unlike the far-left candidates who received only 0.5% of the votes and demanded a rupture with the IMF and financial orthodoxy, da Silva is on record as being willing to continue IMF-requested austerity measures and not defaulting on Brazil's debt.

For this election, da Silva replaced his tub-thumping trade-unionist rhetoric with a softer "love and peace" image. One can think of Bill Clinton, the Democrat who ended "welfare as we know it" and pushed NAFTA while "feeling our pain."

For instance, da Silva's Workers Party (PT) talks much less of privatization than Mr. Serra, but does admit that it would bring in private firms to run water services.

Indeed, it appears that this election has been more about the personality of da Silva versus Serra, rather than the policies of outgoing President Cardoso. The president remains personally popular.

President Cardoso achieved many good things for Brazil while in power. His "Real Plan" finally tamed massive inflation that plagued Brazil, reducing inflation from 40% per year to single digits. This is believed to have lead to a reduction in poverty in Brazil from 20% to 15% between 1993 and 1995 as inflation came to an end, though it has not improved further since.

Under President Cardoso:

o Infant mortality dropped from over 40 per 1,000 live births in 1993 to under 30 in 2000.

o The number of children aged 7-14 in school increased from 86% in 1992 to 96% in 2001.

o The number of permanent dwellings increased from 36 million to 46 million between 1993 and 2001.

o The number of permanent dwellings connected to sewers went from 38% in 1993 to 46% in 2001.

o And propelled by privatisation, the share of households with a telephone has risen from 20% to 58% in the eight years to 2001.

One of Brazil's most enduring social problems has been the sometimes violent conflict between landless peasants and the "latifundiarios", owners of huge and often under-used tracts. President Cardoso's land reform involved buying such land and helping peasants set up co-operative farms on it. More than 600,000 families have been settled during his mandate, three times as many as in the preceding 30 years—though Mr da Silva and the PT continue to portray themselves as the landless peasants' champions.

da Silva's job, whether he realises or admits it, will be to continue and improve on Mr Cardoso's unfinished package of reforms. He will have only a few months from being elected to gain the markets' confidence. His advisers promise that he will get moving even before taking office in January: for example, pressing the current Congress to approve reforms of the growth-stifling tax system.

President Cardoso dreamed of Brazil following the example of Spain, which has gone from being poor and backward to wealthy and modern in the generation since its return to democracy. His country has gone only part-way during his mandate, and now Mr da Silva may have to complete the job.

Intriguingly, it was a Socialist government in Spain in the 1980s that achieved many of the economic reforms that set the country on the road to growth.