Brazil’s top elections court decided Thursday that candidates will have to keep their beaks shut when it comes to vote-for-me Tweeting before the official campaign begins.

In a 4-3 vote, the court decided that politicians in the upcoming municipal elections can only start using Twitter for electoral purposes after July 6, according to Argentina’s Minuto Uno.

Brazil will be holding nationwide municipal elections this October. The first round of voting takes place 7th October, and the second on 28th October.

The move comes after a 2010 vice-presidential candidate was found Tweeting two days before the official campaign start.

Whoever violates the law will face fines ranging between 5,000 and 25,000 reals (between US$2,771 and $13,858).

The decision only affects Tweeting politicians, not those using Facebook or other social networking sites.

At 8am this morning the presidential candidates stopped their campaigns throughout the country in response to the electoral ban for Sunday’s general elections.

The electoral campaigns must cease until 9pm this Sunday when the first official results for the general elections are released. The law forbids candidates and their employees to give political statements, publish poll results, and give public speeches.

Any kind of cultural sport or social event that gathers too many people is forbidden on Sunday, as well as the sale of alcoholic beverages from 12am until three hours after voting ends.

Citizens who disrespect these measures can be accused of violating the electoral code and fined.

The countdown to Argentina’s presidential election is beginning as electoral campaigns wind down this week.

Current president Cristina Férnandez de Kirchner made closing remarks yesterday at the Coliseum. In a much more relaxed campaign than that of the preliminaries in August, she called for “national unity” and said that her winning would be a historical opportunity for Argentina. “For the first time we can think towards the long-term,” she said.

Ricardo Luis Alfonsín, candidate for the Unión para el Desarrollo Social (Union for Social Development), will be bringing his campaign to a close today. Together with his congressional candidates, including Javier González Fraga, Alfonsín will be traveling throughout the city in a caravan to promote his party. They will start at 10am in San Fernando and stop at various points until they reach Belgrano where he will make his final public bid for the presidency.

Tensions between the two Buenos Aires run-off mayoral candidates have come to a head as FPV candidate Daniel Filmus yesterday accused his opponent, Mauricio Macri of running a “dirty campaign”.

Speaking at a press conference, Daniel Filmus and running mate Carlos Tomada accused the PRO of carrying out “fake” telephone polls to voters in which they linked Filmus’ father to Sergio Schoklender, who is under investigation for money-laundering. Filmus’ father was present at the conference.

According to local media, voters received phone calls asking this question: “Did you know that Daniel Filmus’ father is an architect and one of Sergio Schoklender’s main contractors? Now that you know Filmus’ father is involved with Schoklender, will you still vote for him?”

Filmus responded: “My family doesn’t deserve this, and my father is not an architect.”

The call centres in question, now under inspection by Judge Ariel Lijo, are all owned by Macri’s campaign manager, Jaime Duran Barba.

Tomada said: “Durán Barba and Macri used tactics that should condemned by all sectors of society.

“The company sending out these messages, Connectic SRL, have been contracted by the government.”

Macri and Barba have flatly denied the accusations, describing them as “entirely false” and “a last ditch attempt”.

The presidential candidate for the Workers’ Party (PT) in Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, pledged to end poverty in the country if elected in the upcoming elections on 5^th October.

Rousseff declared a commitment “to eradicating misery, to turn Brazil into a developed country, and to provide high quality health and education the Brazilian people”.

She expressed this during the last act of her campaign, carried out with the current head of state of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in the State of San Pablo.

At the same time, the candidate stated that in 2002 the Brazilian people overcame the fear that certain sectors tried to implement in order that the current president would not win.

Rouseff noted that Lula da Silva did not only triumph in 2002 but also in 2006.

She also said that in the next election the Brazilian people “were going to overcome this fear” and that love will conquer hate.

Both the candidate and the president were questioned during the media campaigns about alleged acts of government corruption.

The aspiring presidential candidate also mentioned the social achievements of the current government. She noted that during the Lula da Silva administration some 28 million people have risen out of poverty.

On the other hand, the opposing presidential candidate, Jose Serra, said he was confident that Rousseff will not be elected in the first round and that he has the ballot, following the candidates’ significant fall in the polls.

If next Sunday no candidate obtains more than 50 percent of the votes, excluding blank or spoiled ballots, there would be a second round on 31st October.

Story courtesy of Agencia Pulsar, a news agency run by AMARC-ALC network of community radios

Photo courtesy of Presidencia de la Nación

In an election that yielded few surprises, First Lady and Senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner won the presidency in a landslide victory, capturing 43.9% of the vote and besting her nearest rival, Elisa Carrió, by over 20 percentage points. While competing candidates had placed their hopes in the possibility of a runoff, it was apparent from early on that the night would end with a Kirchner win. With less than 10% of the national vote officially counted, a confident Kirchner strode onto the stage at her campaign bunker inside the Intercontinental Hotel and declared victory. Kirchner becomes the first woman to win a presidential election in Argentina and will succeed her husband, Nestór, on 10th December.

While the outcome of the election was all but certain before the polls opened, the specific results have delineated a new political landscape in the country. Kirchner’s national triumph serves as an overwhelming validation of her husband’s administration, giving the Kirchners’ party, Frente para la Victoria, a clear mandate to continue and expand upon its policies. Kirchner carried every province in the country with the exception of San Luis (where current governor Alberto Rodriguez Sáa captured 68% of the vote), Córdoba (where former finance minister Roberto Lavagna beat out Kirchner by over 10 percentage points), and the city Buenos Aires (where Chaco governor Elisa Carrió triumphed over Kirchner 36% to 25%.)

Carrió’s strong showing, combined with victories by her Coalición Civica candidates in the capital, elevated her to the status of de-facto leader of the opposition. Carrió quickly went on the offensive on election night, joining with other rival candidates in claiming that voting irregularities had tipped the scales even more decisively in the government’s favor. A formal letter of protest was signed by representatives from all the major opposition parties, citing ‘the absence of ballots at the start of the elections’ and ‘a systematic and massive robbery with the purpose of subverting the will of the citizens’.

The government categorically rejected these allegations. Anibal Fernández, Minister of the Interior, claimed that contrary to the opposition’s claims the election was ‘one of the most transparent in the history of Argentina’.

Kirchner’s early victory speech also rankled her opponents. Carrió criticized the Kirchners for celebrating their triumph when so little of the vote had been officially tallied. “There’s no civilized country in the world where a candidate announces victory before at least 60% of the vote has been counted,” Carrió said.

Photo courtesy of Presidencia de la Nación

Yet these complaints could do little to quell the ebullient mood at the Kirchner camp, where the president-elect extended an olive branch to her opponents and reaffirmed her commitment to all Argentines, whether or not they had voted to her.

Kirchner’s conciliatory gestures yielded some immediate results. In her victory speech, the president-elect spoke of her continued opposition to abortion, a statement that sat very well with the Church hierarchy. On the following Thursday, Cardinal Jorge Borgoglio sent a congratulatory note to Kirchner, leading to speculation that the relationship between the Church and the government may warm considerably after years of a frosty distance.

While Cristina Kirchner’s administration is expected to continue the majority of her husband’s policies, commentators have speculated that she will break from his precedent in a number of areas. Foreign policy appears to be first on the president-elect’s list.

With her victory all but assured, Cristina Kirchner spent little time campaigning within the country, choosing instead to tour Europe with the hopes of forming stronger global ties. Néstor Kirchner focused his foreign policy primarily on Latin America; Cristina Kirchner seems to have a more expansive international outlook. It was no accident that Ségolène Royal, the former French presidential candidate, was on hand for the Kirchners’ election night festivities. President-elect Kirchner wants to be the global face of her nation in a way that her husband never has been.

While the election proved a rousing victory for the Kirchners, and a promising victory-in-defeat for Elisa Carrió, it was a major setback for Mauricio Macri, the capital’s ambitious head of government-elect. Macri had hoped to use the elections as a foundation on which to build a strong opposition to the Kirchner government, fueling speculation that he plans to run for the presidency in 2011.

Photo courtesy of Presidencia de la Nación

Yet, Macri’s election day project proved a dud. His party, Propuesta Republicana (PRO), fielded a slate of candidates in Buenos Aires city but captured only two seats in the Lower House, casting serious doubts on Macri’s ability to create a nationally viable party. In June, Macri, the former president of the Boca Juniors football club, won 60% of the vote in the run-off election for head of government of the capital, leading many to anoint him the most compelling alternative to the Kirchners. Yet following his defeats on election night, he will assume power on 10th December from a considerably weaker position than he held a mere three months ago.

The ramifications of this historic election will play out over the years to come, but for now, it appears the county is holding its breath. The first democratically-elected female president will face serious challenges from the moment she assumes power, from curbing runaway inflation to reeling in a serious crime problem that afflicts many of the country’s major cities. On election night, Buenos Aires was remarkably still, the Plaza de Mayo lying as empty as any other night. The Kirchners’ bunker in the Intercontinental Hotel may have been raucous, but outside were tough realties lying in wait. Even with Carrió’s rise and Macri’s stumble, the opposition remains splintered. It appears, then, that the course of Argentina’s foreseeable future will rest squarely on the shoulders of the new president.