HS in Brazil | The hero of the poor can return from prison to power in the elections – the sitting president of Brazil is already priming lies and fraud and inciting his supporters to arms

Rio de Janeiro

How Brazilians can want to lead their country in either of these categories?

“Both of them should be in prison,” says the women’s clothing retailer Raquel Chaviera.

“One is crazy, the other manipulates the poor,” says the seller of the grocery store Emanuela Maleiros.

of Brazil the two main candidates in the election are the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and a sitting president Jair Bolsonaro. Both have framed the struggle as between good and evil.

The Labor Party’s Lula and the far-right Bolsonaro are ideologically almost extreme. Still, a significant part of the voters does not think so much about whose ideas they like more, but about which one is the lesser evil.

From here there is reason to be interested in the battle in Finland as well, because Brazil, with its 214 million inhabitants, is the most important country in Latin America and the entire southern hemisphere. Its environmental protection alone can affect the future of all of us.

During Lula’s time, the amount of logging in the Amazon rainforest continued to decrease, although it stemmed from previous conservation decisions. Under Bolsonaro, logging has only increased, and he emphasizes the importance of agriculture instead of forest protection.

Support surveys led by Lula, 76, president from 2003 to 2010. His political career should have been over for sure.

Lula got it 12 year sentence among other things money laundering and spent time in prison 580 days. He probably would have won the last presidential election behind barsbut the court denied the nomination.

The Supreme Court invalidate Lula’s sentence last year, but not by declaring the charges to be groundless, but by appealing to a formality: the court that issued the sentence had exceeded its authority.

It is not uncommon that even Lula’s supporters consider the release questionable. He himself has always denied his guilt.

Sitting President Jair Bolsonaro, 67, is seeking another term.

He is known for his outrageous speeches, which are horrified by his opponents and regarded as genuine by his supporters. He has insulted women, blacks, indigenous peoples and sexual minorities. His latest fines of a sexist insult he got in june.

Bolsonaro belittled the seriousness of the coronavirus even in the darkest moments of the pandemic: “We’re all going to die before long.” He claims that he is unvaccinated against the disease, but he has ordered the details of his vaccination card to be kept secret until the year 2121.

The courts have ordered so many criminal investigations into the president’s actions that even Brazilians can’t keep up. The Supreme Court is investigating him for, among other things, the publication of secret police information, the spread of fake news, and groundless claims undermining democracy, according to which voting machines are susceptible to election fraud.

The office of president protects Bolsonaro from various charges, but if he loses the election, he could even face prison terms.

“I vote preferably one that isn’t yet been in prison”, says Isabela Gomes.

He has come to Rio de Janeiro with his friends from the small town of São Sebastião da Grama in the state of São Paulo. The group has gone to see the Christ the Savior statue on the mountaintop on the edge of the city and the English band Coldplay at the Rock in Rio festival.

There is a person sitting at a table in the market cafe opposite Gomes Lucas Biaco, who voted for Bolsonaro in the last election. He is disappointed by this tyranny and failure to reform the crooked tax system.

Now he is leaning towards Lula, although he certainly does not consider him innocent of corruption.

Biaco, 36, works as a theory teacher at a driving school and can afford his own car. He credits his success to Lula’s presidency, when an estimated twenty million Brazilians lifted themselves out of poverty.

Social benefits were financed by the raw materials boom. Beef, soy, oil and minerals flowed from Brazil especially to China.

There are no more opportunities for equally generous spending of money.

“But a right-wing government would not have done the same before.”

So rumpled as the main candidates are, each exudes nationalism and – this is important – initially pushes from outside the elite. Lula is a metal worker by background, Bolsonaro is an army captain.

The most loyal followers tend to treat them messianically. Such worship involves blind faith.

For months, Bolsonaro has started a big lie about election fraud, probably to deny his likely defeat.

Lula is on course to win both the first round this Sunday and the decisive second round on October 30 – if the opinion polls are to be believed.

The research institutes’ calculations are based on the share of the population of the different groups interviewed, but due to the pandemic, the most recent census data is from 2010. So nobody knowshow much of the population today belongs to, for example, the poorest income class (typically Lula’s supporters) or evangelical revival movements (typically Bolsonaro’s supporters).

Bolsonaro claims that the poll results are outright lies and that the voting machines are vulnerable to tampering, even though Brazil has already had good experience with the electronic system for twenty years.

Bolsonaro has tightened up a bit in the polls. The sitting president is favored by the slowdown in inflation and economic growth faster than forecast.

On the other hand, more and more Brazilians are going hungry. In July, the UN returned Brazil to its Hunger Map after an eight-year hiatus. You get on the map when at least 2.5 percent of the country’s inhabitants suffer from a chronic food shortage. In Brazil, the share has grown to 4.1 percent, or nearly nine million people. According to the UN, the food security of more than 61 million Brazilians is somehow threatened.

The number of hungry people increased even before the pandemic. It is a particular tragedy because Brazil is one of the world’s largest food producers.

“Are a rich country, but we haven’t used our riches”, says clothing merchant Raquel Chaviera – the same one who would send Lula and Bolsonaro to prison together.

He has been working all his life, but he just barely gets by. He has lost hope that the quality of life in Brazil would improve.

Chaviera started in the clothing industry at the age of 13. He founded his own shop at the age of 25.

After expenses, he has 2,000–3,000 reais left from the sale, or about 400–600 euros per month. It’s barely enough for rent and food – especially when more than a hundred euros goes to private health insurance, which he considers a necessity.

“On the public side, people wait 5-6 months to get treatment and die in line.”

Chaviera the business is in the covered São Cristóvão market, which focuses on northeastern Brazilian products. The district of the same name is full of residents from northeastern Brazil.

It is precisely the northeastern corner of Brazil that may guarantee Lula’s return to power. It is the country’s poorest region, where Lula is a hero to many thanks to his last season. However, the Labor Party’s winning streak came to a halt when the Brazilian economy collapsed and Lula’s chosen successor Dilma Rousseff on the qui vive. A corruption scandal led to his dismissal in 2016.

Lula has now received criticism for fishing for the votes of the poor with gifts such as telephones and one-time grants, such as Bolsonaro has also distributed during the elections.

A security guard at the market in Rio de Janeiro André Luiz, 42, says he is voting for Bolsonaro because he likes his tough line against crime. He still states that a better way to lead the country could be imagined.

“We would be stronger united, but both candidates are fomenting this endless war.”

in Brazil more homicides are committed than in any other country. Relative to the population, it is among the twenty worst countries.

In the first half of this year alone, 40 politicians were killed in Brazil and violence was used against 214, fat Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. According to the Datafolha research institute, two-thirds of voters fear being the target of violence because of their political opinions.

Bolsonaro has eased the availability of weapons. The number of handguns owned by civilians in Brazil almost tripled from 2018 to 2021, told think tank Igarapé.

President’s son, Member of Parliament Eduardo Bolsonaro urged new gun owners to join Bolsonaro’s volunteer forces.

It’s from the last few months open two case, in which a supporter of Bolsonaro has killed a supporter of Lula, apparently due to a political motive. Lula has appeared in his campaign events in bulletproof vests.

“I I’m afraid. We fear them,” Clarita Caspary says. “Red ones. The left.”

Caspary is a retired psychologist. She lives with her husband in the Copacabana district. They drive to their home street through a guarded gate. The elevator, guarded by the doorman, takes you directly inside the high-rise apartment.

“We must be able to defend ourselves with weapons. Look at what was done to Bolsonaro.”

During the last election, Bolsonaro was stabbed in the stomach at a campaign event. He has had to go through several surgeries because of it. The attacker was released without charge, based on mental health reasons.

The stabbing could affect the election result. It was apt to increase sympathy for Bolsonaro and forced the cancellation of the TV debates about the candidate of the Labor Party Fernando Haddadia against.

However, Lula is in the lead in opinion polls.

Caspary explains this by saying that the poor do not understand.

Read more: Bolsonaro used Brazil’s 200th anniversary to sow suspicion – the President may be preparing to deny his defeat in the elections

The most alarming according to speculation, Bolsonaro is plotting a coup. He idolizes the military dictatorship of his youth, and has many officers in his administration.

However, many experts estimate that the armed forces would hardly support a coup attempt, as it would make Brazil an international pariah.

More likely, Bolsonaro will deny his defeat, like his idol Donald Trump did. It could know much more widespread unrest than in the United States, where Trump supporters violently occupied the congressional building.

“In the United States, both the police and the armed forces defend the constitution and the rule of law. In Brazil, I’m not so sure, especially about the police,” says the political scientist Mauricio Santoro from the State University of Rio de Janeiro.

He points out that state-level police forces have a particularly large number of weapons.

“Depending on the state and the situation, they can be very strongly in favor of Bolsonaro.”

One is certain.

“This does not end on election day.”