Brazil media sees country divided after poll

Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) (AFP) - Brazil's media saw a country deeply divided Monday after leftist President Dilma Rousseff scored a narrow re-election victory over Social Democrat Aecio Neves.

Rousseff won a gruelling race with 51.6 percent of the vote for the narrowest winning margin since 1945, and acknowledged she needed to reconcile a society split between the nation's rich south and poor north.

The vast majority of the media had been banking on Neves ending 12 years in power by Rousseff's Workers Party (PT), but instead she pulled off "the narrowest win in the country's history," Estado de Sao Paulo daily noted.

Globo and Folha de Sao Paulo joined Estado in noting a record abstention rate of 26.1 percent, equivalent to 37.2 million voters, many turned off by a brutal campaign which saw some televised debates turn into personal slanging matches.

Valor financial daily also focused on the abstentions, noting the election contest had been a "battle in which 26 percent (of voters) had no candidate" they wanted to back.

The same paper also indicated it expected former president Lula to have an influence on shaping Rousseff's new economic team with long-serving Guido Mantega stepping down as finance minister.

O Estado de S. Paulo note Rousseff was proposing a referendum on political reform, but added that above all, "the challenge is to overturn the sluggish state of the economy."

Folha de Sao Paulo noted the deep division between left and right.

"A divided country will be reflected in Congress," it wrote, where Rousseff can count on a clear, albeit reduced, majority among leftist allies but where 28 parties will be jostling for influence.

Valor quoted Sao Paulo University professor, Renato Janine Ribeiro, as saying Rousseff had to make good on her pledge to push through political reform or risk her success being "a Pyrrhic victory" given that "society is divided."