With a view to the ballot on October 30, a close battle begins between two opposing political visions for Brazil. After a first round that was closer than expected between the two candidates: the left-wing candidate ‘Lula’ Da Silva, who obtained 48.4%, and the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, who got 43.2; the presidential campaign has resumed in the South American giant. All Brazilians are now called upon to choose a side, in a country divided in two.
The campaign for the second round of the Brazilian presidential elections began in a tense atmosphere. On Friday, the two candidates exchanged withering attacks, accusing each other of “drunkenness” and “cannibalism.”
The campaign team of the former left-wing president, ‘Lula’ Da Silva, unearthed and released a video in which the current president and far-right candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, affirms that he would be able to eat human flesh. The clip has gone viral on social media in Brazil.
Bolsonaro’s team replied that these statements had been “taken out of context”, and announced an appeal to the electoral authorities. The far-right president, who usually calls ‘Lula’ a “thief”, treated him in turn as a “drunkard” on Friday, during a press conference at the Alvorada Palace, his official residence in Brasilia.
Lula “will bring in a clique of incompetents to govern Brazil. This will not work! (…) What is at stake is our freedom!”
The former left-wing president reacted by saying that he would not respond to Bolsonaro’s “mean game.” “We are facing a man without a soul, without a heart,” he added.
The last political unions before a decisive second round
And it is in this context of extreme tension and polarization that Brazilians are being asked to choose a side.
On Wednesday, October 5, a long-awaited alliance took place, in which Senator Simone Tebet, who came third in the first round with 4.2% of the votes, made her support for ‘Lula’ official. On this occasion, Ella Tebet said that it was no longer possible to remain in “the omission of neutrality”.
Tebet is an elected senator from Mato Grosso do Sul, a soybean-producing state in the center-west of the country. Close to the agribusiness sector, her support is a valuable asset for the leftist leader and could, according to some political analysts, allow him to win back the electorate from the rural and conservative interior, generally hostile to ‘Lula’s’ Workers’ Party.
Another of those who has joined ‘Lula’s’ party is Ciro Gomes, the fourth man in the first round: “This is the only option between two unsatisfactory options”, declared in a video the leader of the Democratic Labor Party, who during months led a bitter campaign against ‘Lula’.
These two unions could represent more than 7% of the votes (about 8 million votes) and ensure – a priori – the victory of the candidate of the left. But the divisions within the Brazilian political spectrum are such that, despite the statements by Tebet and Gomes, their respective parties have not given any voting instructions to their voters.
Within Simone Tebet’s party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement, some of the most prominent members, such as former president Michel Temer (2016-2018), who overthrew Dilma Roussef, or deputy Sergio Souza, head of the influential agribusiness lobby in the Chamber of Deputies, have announced unconditional support for Jair Bolsonaro.
And precisely, the current president made a show of force on October 4, when he met in the Alvorada Palace the governors of the three richest and most populous states in the country: Rodrigo García, from São Paulo, Claudio Casto, from Río de Janeiro, and Romeu Zema, from Minas Gerais. Between the three of them, they add up to half of the gross domestic product of the country and of the voters.
The candidate for re-election also allowed himself the luxury of obtaining the support of one of his right-wing rivals, former Minister of Justice Sergio Moro, the famous judge of the “Lava Jato” operation, with whom he had broken violently in 2020 during the Covid-19 crisis.
Campaign plans defined, according to new strategies
Facing these crucial elections, the state of Minas Gerais is at the center of the battle. Billed as the country’s “pivot state,” it is divided between conservative rural areas and more progressive urban centers. In the first round, ‘Lula’ had a slight advantage over Bolsonaro: 48.3% of the votes against 43.6%.
There, the former union activist has launched a campaign to win over the evangelical electorate, which makes up a third of voters and is largely in favor of the extreme right. A pamphlet titled “Lula is a Christian,” stating that the leader of the Brazilian left “has never talked to the devil or made a pact with him” was distributed.
At the same time, Bolsonaro is focusing his campaign on the working classes, who overwhelmingly voted for the former president on October 2. To do this, the leader of the extreme right multiplies the electoral promises, without specifying how he will fulfill them: increase in social minimums, lower taxes, readjustment of civil servants’ salaries, increase in energy bonuses and aid to taxi and truck drivers. among other promises.
The latest polls show a difference of 10 points between the two candidates and predict the victory of ‘Lula’, but many Brazilians doubt the reliability of these polls, which greatly underestimated the vote of the extreme right in the first round.
The latest Datafolha poll published on the eve of the first round gave ‘Lula’ 50% of the votes cast compared to 36% for Jair Bolsonaro.
Another poll, published by another institute, Ipec, gave 51% of the valid votes to ‘Lula’ compared to 37% for Bolsonaro, also before the first round last Sunday. Last Wednesday, the same institute predicted a victory for ‘Lula’ in the second round with 55%, compared to 45% for Bolsonaro.
“We have defeated the lies” in the polls, the far-right president exultantly congratulated himself on the night of the first round. Jair Bolsonaro, whom the polls have predicted defeat for several months, has constantly branded them “lies.”
With AFP and local media
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