Nationwide municipal elections under way in Brazil

Brazilians trooped to the polls Sunday to vote in nationwide municipal elections seen as a key test of the ruling Workers Party's popularity ahead of the 2014 presidential elections. The election is taking place under the shadow of a major corruption trial embroiling ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's Workers Party (PT). Some 139 million voters are registered to elect 5,561 mayors and 48,000 municipal councilors for four-year terms among 450,000 candidates representing more than 20 political parties. The mandatory electronic voting began at 1100 GMT and polling stations were to close at 2000 GMT. First results are expected late Sunday. In cities of more than 200,000 people, a second round is scheduled for October 28 if no candidate secures an absolute majority. Speaking in the southern city of Porto Alegre, President Dilma Rousseff, a former urban guerrilla who succeeded her mentor Lula in early 2011, hailed the peaceful conduct of the vote, which she described as a "huge festival". In the 2008 polls, the PT won in 558 municipalities, the centrist PMDB party triumphed in 1,207 and the opposition Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) took 788.Analysts expect the PT to do much better in this election, particularly in Brazil's north and northeast, despite the ongoing trial involving a congressional vote-buying scheme that unleashed the country's biggest graft scandal in 20 years. Thirty-seven former ministers, lawmakers, businessmen and bankers are facing prosecution before the Supreme Court over the alleged scheme that ran from 2002 to 2005 during Lula's first term. While Lula was cleared, the scandal nearly cost the 66-year-old his re-election in 2006. On Sunday, the popular ex-president said he did not believe the trial would hurt the prospects of his protege, ex-education minister Fernando Haddad, in the most closely watched contest for mayor of Sao Paulo, Brazil's economic capital. "In the past two months of campaign, I was never questioned on this issue," he added. The latest opinion poll by the Datafolha polling institute credited Haddad with 24 percent support, PSDB standard bearer and ex-presidential candidate Jose Serra with 28 percent and Celso Russomanno, a populist former television consumer advocate, with 27 percent. The Ibope institute meanwhile had all three candidates tied on 26 percent each. The other major race is in Rio where incumbent Eduardo Paes, a PT-backed member of the PMDB, is favored to win re-election and thus remain at the city's helm during the 2016 summer Olympics.