Leftist Rousseff, 62, comfortably won Brazilian’s run-off election against her challenger, Jos? Serra, a former mayor of S?o Paulo and representative of the centrist Brazilian Social Democratic Party PSDB. Rousseff, who will be sworn in on January 1, won 56 percent of the vote, while Serra took 44 percent.

In her campaign, Rousseff, a close aid to outgoing president Luiz In?cio Lula da Silva, had been riding on his undiminished popularity after two consecutive terms in office.

Speaking in front of a cheering crowd in the capital Brazilia, Rousseff paid homage to Lula, pledging to extend what she called a "new era of prosperity." She also set out twin goals for her rule -- eradicating poverty while maintaining Brazil's hard-won economic stability.

"We cannot rest while there are Brazilians who are hungry, while there are families living on the street, while poor children are abandoned to their fate," said Rousseff, quoted by Reuters.

Rousseff’s victory has been hailed in Bulgaria, where she is the daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant.

For several weeks, the Brazilian elections had sparked an unprecedented fervour in Bulgaria, where the small European nation took unprecedented pride in the rise of a world-scale leader with a traditional family name.

Speaking to the Bulgarian TV channel bTV, Rousseff said the she was well aware of her Bulgarian roots, but never had the chance to speak the language since her father’s death, when she was 15.

Rousseff was born in the Brazilian southwest to a Brazilian mother, Dilma Coimbra Silva and a Bulgarian father, Pedro Rousseff (born Petar Rusev), who left his home country in 1929 to escape persecution for ties to the Communist Party, according to Dilma Rousseff herself.

However, Bulgarian relatives of Petar Rousseff tell a different story. According to them, he had left the country and a pregnant wife, because of debt problems. He had a son, which he never met, and who recently died.

Whatever his past, Petar Rousseff, a lawyer by training, did well in business in Brazil, re-married and gave his daughter a middle-class upbringing.

Later, at the age of 17, Dilma Rousseff joined a Marxist movement and reportedly was trained in guerilla tactics. Between 1970 and 1972 she was jailed and reportedly tortured.

Once released, she returned to school and graduated in 1977 with a degree in economics. She was working as secretary of energy in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul when President Lula Da Silva tapped her to take over as energy minister in 2003.

The television announcement caught the eye of Rousseff’s relatives in the Bulgarian city of Gabrovo, where they have been following her political career ever since. The city of Gabrovo, in central Bulgaria, organized a photo exhibition, revealing the details of the Bulgarian genealogy of Dilma Rousseff.

Now Rousseff’s Bulgarian relatives say they hope she will visit Gabrovo as President of one of the world’s greatest nations, and “recover her roots”.