Brazilians celebrated yesterday as left-wing President Dilma Rousseff was returned to power in the fourth straight election victory for her Workers Party.

Ms Rousseff won with 51.6 per cent of the vote while her rival Aecio Neves of the right-wing Social Democracy Party took 48.4 per cent after a hard-fought campaign.

It keeps South America’s largest country in step with the continent’s leftward trajectory and out of the shadow of the United States.

Since taking power under Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 

2003 the Workers Party has lifted over 40 million Brazilians out of poverty and reduced unemployment to record lows.

The party and its allies on the left had warned that a Neves victory would have meant a return to laissez-faire, free-market policies at home and a pro-US foreign policy abroad.

Mr Neves had repeatedly criticised the regional Mercosur trading bloc, into which Ms Rousseff was instrumental in securing Venezuela’s entry in 2012, and called for signing a free trade agreement with the European Union without the required consent of all Mercosur members.

The rightwinger had also attacked the president for condemning Israel’s latest invasion of Gaza.

Congratulations poured in from Brazil’s left-wing neighbours in Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina, as well as from its largest trading partner China.

The latter’s president Xi Jinping praised a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Brazil which would help “promote a more rational world order.”

Ms Rousseff is a former freedom fighter who was jailed and tortured during the 1970s for opposing the military dictatorship.

She called the result “a vote for hope, for the improvement of what we have achieved so far.”

Pledging a Brazil based on “education, culture, science and innovation,” she that said improving public services and pushing through political reforms to end impunity for corrupt officials and promote democratic engagement were top of the agenda.

Brazil’s National Confederation of Agricultural Workers, the world’s largest agricultural union federation, said that Ms Rousseff’s victory represented “the aspirations of rural workers and the Brazilian people.

“Those fighting for a more just, equal and solidarity-conscious country are rewarded.”