In Brazil, Sao Paulo’s State Legislative Assembly voted to privatise its water and sanitation company on December 6, after the parliamentary session was briefly suspended while security forces cleared anti-privatisation protesters from the gallery using batons and pepper spray. Green Left's Federico Fuentes was on the scene.
Socialist Left Movement/PSOL - The left candidate Lula da Silva won the first round with 48.4% of the vote (57,259,504 votes) against 43.2% for his right-wing opponent Jair Bolsonaro (51,072,345 votes): an advantage of about 6 million votes. However, what marked the result - contrary to the expectation created by all the opinion polls - was that Bolsonaro did much better than predicted.