2:26pm UK, Sunday October 31, 2010

Pete Norman, Sky News Online

The hand-picked candidate of Brazil’s hugely popular outgoing president is poised to replace him as voters cast ballots in the run-off election.

Presidential hopeful Dilma Rousseff was mobbed by Brazilian reporters after voting

Dilma Rousseff, a 62-year-old former Marxist guerrilla who long ago left behind her rebel ways, holds the lead in opinion polls and was bolstered by the support of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

President Lula has been her political mentor and motive force in the contest with centrist opponent Jose Serra.

As polls opened, Ms Rousseff paid tribute to Mr Lula, and assured Brazilians that while he would not have an official role in her government, he would always be near.

“President Lula, obviously, won’t be a presence within my cabinet,” Ms Rousseff said at a final campaign stop in her hometown of Belo Horizonte.

“But I will always talk with the president and I will have a very close and strong relationship with him.

“Nobody in this country will separate me from President Lula.”

Ms Rousseff, who is poised to be Brazil’s first female president, pledged to continue Mr Lula’s popular social programmes which have helped pull 20 million Brazilians out of poverty since he took office in 2003.

Ms Rousseff flashed victory signs after Sunday’s vote

As Latin America’s biggest country, Brazil’s powerful economy has pushed it into an important position within key emerging nation status.

“I want to unite Brazil around a project not just of material development, but also of values,” Ms Rousseffsaid.

“When we win an election, we must govern for all Brazilians without exception.”

Ms Rousseff cast her vote in southern Brazil and flashed a victory sign as she smiled broadly.

Mr Serra, 68, is a former governor of Sao Paulo state and one-time national health minister who was badly beaten by Mr Lula in the 2002 presidential election.

Presidential candidate Jose Serra

He said the election was far from over and criticised what he said would be Ms Rousseff’s heavy reliance on Mr Lula to help rule.

“We know that nobody can govern in the place of another,” Mr Serra said.

“Whoever is elected has to govern – the outsourcing of a government does not exist.”

Yet Mr Lula, with an 80% approval rating at the end of his eight years in office, casts a shadow over the political landscape in Brazil.

Mr Serra promised that if elected, he would not ostracise Mr Lula because of the outgoing leader’s immense political capacity.

In the first round of the presidential election on October 3, Ms Rousseff got 46.9% of the votes, falling just short of the majority she needed to avoid a run-off , while Mr Serra finished second with 32.6%.

Mr Serra and Ms Rousseff – both economists by training – have been active participants in Brazil’s political transformation following the 1964-85 military dictatorship.

Ms Rousseff was a key player in an armed militant group that resisted the junta and was imprisoned and tortured for it.

She is also a cancer survivor and a former minister of energy and chief of staff to Mr Lula.