BRASILIA, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) -- No matter who gets elected to replace Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as the Brazilian president, Brazil is not to change much domestically, analysts said.

    President da Silva has served his maximum two consecutive terms as allowed by the constitution and will not be elected in the October 2010 presidential elections.

    Local political pundits, however, do not fear the vacuum left by da Silva who has been in each and every election campaign in the past two decades.

    This is because Brazil has such a multi-party system with numerous parties sharing the vote that no single party has a chance of gaining the power alone.

    Four parties have been dominating via coalition the Brazilian political landscape since 1985 when democracy returned and their absolute majority of seats in both Brazil's Senate and Chamber of Deputies forced smaller parties to often make alliance with at least one of them.

    The intertwinement of parties aside, the eligible presidential candidates do not differ much from one another, as far as domestic issues are concerned.

    The front runners, according to pundits and polls, now include Dilma Rousseff, Jose Serra and Ciro Gomes.

    Chief of Staff Dilma Rousseff, chosen by da Silva himself, represents the Workers' Party (PT); Sao Paulo Governor Jose Serra runs for the Social Democracy Party (PSDB), and former cabinet minister Ciro Gomes runs for the Socialist Party (PSB).

    Only Gomes' party is outside the incumbent ruling coalition but he himself has been an ally of da Silva.

    Having both fought against the military dictatorship before 1985, Rousseff and Serra shared similar views on many domestic issues including the existing economic policy to bail the country out of the global economic slowdown.

    "Serra variables would be strong fiscal adjustment and relaxed monetary policy, ie, low interest and high exchange rates. Dilma will ... do a fiscal adjustment, but less than Serra, and there will be less scope for intervention in exchange and interest rates. But both show concerns with the exchange rate," said Jose Luis Oreiro, economist and professor at the University of Brasilia.

    Sociologist Werneck Vianna, from the Instituto Universitario dePesquisas de Rio de Janeiro, predicted that the debate on mobilizing the state as the development inducer will be central during the forthcoming campaigning.

    "It is difficult to differentiate Ciro from Dilma or Serra. All the three (candidates) have a very similar profile, and Serra and Dilma are even more similar. They are executives, people trained in administration, with a vocation for that type of command," Vianna said.

    But analysts agreed that Brazilians would see some changes in their country's foreign policy after 2010, especially the country's approach toward its South American neighbors and partner countries in the South-South cooperation.

    As the opposition spokesperson, Serra already criticized the government for its position in the recent accommodation of the Iranian president's visit to Brazil.

    Serra described in his published newspaper article the government's position as "embarrassing" and "undesirable."

    Brazil may pull further away from Venezuela for its military cooperation with the United States and exert greater pressure on Argentina for commercial differences if Serra gets elected, analysts said.

    Though Serra enjoyed an early 20-point lead in opinion polls, the analysts believed that Rousseff and Gomes, both supported personally by da Silva, would easily catch up in later polls thanks to the influence of the popular incumbent president who still holds a personal approval rate of 80 percent.