It’s Rousseff vs Nevel in Brazil race

Rio de Janeiro: Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff will face Social Democrat Aecio Neves in a run-off election, after edging out environmentalist Marina Silva in Sunday’s vote.

With nearly all ballots counted, the leftist incumbent had 42 percent of the vote to 34 percent for business-world favorite Neves, who fended off the once unstoppable-looking Silva to reach the October 26 run-off.

After a campaign packed with all the twists and turns of a telenovela a candidate’s death in a fiery plane crash, a poor maid’s rise to the cusp of the presidency, a seedy oil scandal the election produced a traditional-looking second round between the two parties that have led the world’s seventh-largest economy for the past 20 years.

Neves, an ex-governor and the scion of a political dynasty, vowed to carry the mantel of “change,” the buzzword of the campaign after four years of economic

slowdown. Silva, his running mate, took Campos’s place and initially leapt in the polls with her broad-based appeal, promising to be Brazil’s first “poor, black” president. But, rose from illiteracy and poverty to become a respected conservation activist, lost steam in the last month finishing on about 21 percent.