: latin america

||| BRAZIL. The ruling Workers Party is seeking to increase its control of local governments

Shootings sour municipal elections 

||| Brazil’s ruling party is hoping to ride popular President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s coattails to significant gains in municipal elections Sunday that are considered a key test ahead of 2010’s general ballot.

Marco Sobaja | AP Writer
 

BRASILIA – Isolated shootings in Brazil soured Sun-day's municipal elections that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's allies hope will give them a leg up on 2010's presidential vote.
Boosted by Silva's popularity amid an extended economic boom that has raised salaries and lifted millions out of poverty, the ruling Workers Party is seeking to in-crease its control of local governments, especially in the 26 state capitals.
Analysts say such gains will help the party in its bid to hang on to the presidency after Silva is termed out in 2010.
With 82 percent of the vote counted in Sao Paulo, Latin America's largest city, current Mayor Gilberto Kassab and former Tourism Minister Marta Suplicy of Silva's Workers Party were poised to advance to an Oct. 26 runoff.
Suplicy had led opinion polls leading up to the election, but apparently slipped despite Silva's backing and was in second place with 31 percent of the vote to Kassab's 34.

 “We expect whoever is elected can do something to eradicate violence from the streets.”

Former Sao Paulo state Gov. Geraldo Alckmin, who lost the 2006 presidential election to Silva, was third with 23 percent.
Rio de Janeiro residents sent two politicians from Silva's ruling coalition to a runoff.
However Eduardo Paes of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party and Fernando Gabeira of the Green Party have personally been at odds with the president.
The important southeastern city of Belo Horizonte will see a second round to choose between two Silva backers.
Violence ranked high among the concerns of Brazilians ahead of Sunday's vote.
"We expect whoever is elected can do something to eradicate violence from the streets," 56-year-old housewife Ana María Paulino said before voting in Sao Paulo. "Everything would be better if we had less violence."
On election day, Silva's press office said a man who tried to invade the presidential residence in Brasilia was shot in the leg with nonlethal ammunition after ignoring warnings from security. The man was reportedly in a hospital and expected to recover.
Silva and his wife, Marisa Leticia, were not in the residence at the time, and it was not clear whether the incident was related to the vote. |||

||| MEXICO. In local election

Ex-ruling party rebounds

Natalia Parra | AP Writer
PULCO, Mexico – The party that governed Mexico for 71 consecutive years has rebounded in local elections, returns showed on Monday, and a poll had it jumping into the lead for next year's national congressional vote.
Nearly complete results from the southern state of Guerrero showed the Institutional Revo-lutionary Party recapturing mayorships in the major tourist centers of Acapulco and Zihuatanejo while holding onto the state capital, Chilpancingo.
The party known as the PRI appears to have benefited from splits in the leftist opposition and by the government's struggle with drug violence and a slowing economy.
The PRI has struggled since losing its seven-decade grip on Mexico's presidency in 2000.
It finished third in the 2006 presidential and congressional races. But a poll published Mon-day by El Universal newspaper showed a clear PRI lead for the 2009 congressional elections.
Forty-four percent of those polled in late September said they would vote for the PRI if congressional elections were held now.
President Felipe Calderón's conservative National Action Party was favored by 34 percent, and the leftist Democratic Rev-olution Party by 19 percent.
The PRI and National Action had been tied at 40 two months ago. The poll by the Buendia & Laredo company surveyed 1,000 people face-to-face nationwide and had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
The big loser in the Guerrero vote was Democratic Revolution, which finished just behind Na-tional Action in the 2006 presidential race and won the state's governorship in 2005.
Recent feuds nearly split the party and its leftist coalition.
The PRI's Manuel Anorve won Acapulco, the state's largest city, with just 34 percent of the vote. Two leftists backed by rival factions in the Democratic Rev-olution coalition split 62 percent of the vote.
The PRI won in 14 of the state's 28 legislative districts, up from 10 three years ago, while Democratic Revolution and its allies captured 13, down from 18 in the current legislature. Calderón's party, a minor force in Guerrero, won one seat. |||