Bolsonaro sows doubts about the Electoral Court while Lula tries to overcome the reluctance of the business class to his candidacy
A few days before the elections for the Presidency of Brazil, which will be held next Sunday, mistrust prevails over the political programs of the candidates. Jair Bolsonaro, current president, is in a frontal war with Alexandre de Moraes, head of the Federal Superior Court (STF), who is also in charge of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), who at the end of March ordered the capture of several businessmen close to Bolsonaro upon discovering that in his WhatsApp group they defended a coup d’état in the event that Lula da Silva won the elections.
“I prefer a coup d’état to the return of the Workers’ Party,” Josué Gomez, president of Fiesp, a federation of industries in the State of Sao Paulo, had written in one of those messages. In this group of heavy men from the Brazilian financial community, they sent each other memes and complained about inflation, while also sharing anti-democratic views. De Moraes did not take long to send the federal to the houses of the eight involved. He froze their bank accounts and ordered social media to suspend some of his accounts. Bolsonaro considered that the president of the STF had exceeded his limits with this action and with other investigations that are carried out on him and some of his allies.
On the other side, Lula, the great favorite by the polls to once again preside over one of the largest countries in the world, attended a dinner with a large number of businessmen and the first thing the organizer of the meeting asked for was that the guests will leave their phones in a bag. Many did not accept. And this Wednesday, De Moraes opened the doors of the room where the scrutiny will be carried out by the electoral control bodies of the representatives of the political parties and the observation missions of the electoral day to demonstrate that it was not no “dark room,” as Bolsonaro called it.
«It is always important to act with transparency, loyalty to all those who participate in the electoral process to show that this is an open room, a bright room. It is neither secret nor obscure,” Moraes said after the visit, which was not attended by the two top candidates for the Presidency, but which was attended by the Minister of Defense, General Paulo Sergio Nogueira, accompanied by a technical team from military and the president of Jair Bolsonaro’s party, Valdemar Costa Neto.
“A Presidential Threat”
“Everything is due to the fact that we have a president who is a threat to public institutions,” says Débora Thome, a political scientist and researcher at LabGen-UFF (Federal University of Fluminense). “A president who is anti-democratic, who puts everything under suspicion, institutes, polls, and simply because he is far-right,” adds Thome in a telephone conversation with this newspaper.
In his dinner-meeting with heavyweights of the country’s economy, Lula was direct, according to several media outlets published today, despite the attempt to control the leaks. “I need you to end the misery in Brazil” was the first dart that the former Brazilian president launched at the business community between 2003 and 2010. “Poverty is not just my problem,” he added, and then invited them to maintain a dialogue without hypocrisy and ask them that they clearly state what their proposals are to get Brazil out of the hole. There are many who criticize Lula for not having a clear economic project, for having been indecisive until now, and the candidate is aware that he will face stiff resistance from the financial world.
“I don’t want the government to go into debt for current expenses, but only for investments,” said Lula, who on several occasions demanded responsibility from businessmen in controlling spending. Considered the candidate of the poor, Lula maintains his ideas of seeing a middle-class Brazil, in which the poor enter at that level. “I want airports full of people traveling,” he added, practically indirectly assuring that he will respect the independence of the Central Bank and that he will propose a tax reform.
After this meeting, which some critics pointed out as more productive than the one Bolsonaro had in recent days, there is a suspicion that some of Bolsonaro’s allies will end up supporting Lula’s candidacy. The candidate ended up being applauded and taking selfies with several of those present.
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