By Eduardo Simões
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – The fate of the caucuses that would define the PSDB candidate for the presidency this Sunday is in the hands of the technical feasibility of the application hired for the vote, said the party’s president, Bruno Araújo, this Sunday, the day when, beyond from the technological failure that prevented the announcement of a winner, the internal rift within the acronym was evident.
Suspended due to the flaw in the application developed exclusively for internal consultation, the previews do not have a date to be resumed and a definition will depend on the technical opinion to be presented to Araújo and representatives of the three candidates – the governors of São Paulo, João Doria, and from Rio Grande do Sul, Eduardo Leite, and the former mayor of Manaus Arthur Virgílio–, on Monday afternoon.
“There is something greater than the will of the two governors, which is technical feasibility. This will be the emperor of the process”, Araújo told journalists after a meeting with Doria, Leite and Virgílio at the PSDB headquarters in Brasília.
Shortly beforehand, Doria and Virgílio expressed in a joint note the position that the caucuses should be resumed on Sunday, while Leite said that the process should be concluded, at the latest, by Tuesday.
Doria and Virgílio criticized, in a note, the application used in the previews, even wrongly claiming that the foundation responsible for development was headquartered in Pelotas, Leite’s political cradle. The information was corrected by the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, since, in fact, the Support Foundation of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (FAURGS) is based in Porto Alegre.
Leite also denied opponents’ allegation that he would defend the postponement of the caucuses for next year and said that, if the process is not concluded by Tuesday, the legitimacy of the chosen one in the internal consultation could be “death wound”.
After the meeting with Araújo, Doria stated that it was agreed between him, Leite and Virgílio that the limit for defining the tucanas’ preliminary results is next Sunday, November 28th. Araújo, however, insisted in a speech after the São Paulo governor declared that a date depends on the technical feasibility of the application.
“The deadline is if the application is viable to be resolved by Sunday, then it is feasible. But we cannot anticipate something that has already generated work for us today”, said Araújo.
The PSDB president also said that the caucuses are “irreversible” within the party and, after the meeting, Doria said that the result that will be announced at the end of the process will be “definitive”. Leite and Virgílio did not speak to journalists after the meeting.
The application used in the tucanas previews was a reason for controversy from the beginning, sometimes because of criticism of Doria’s campaign, sometimes by Leite’s supporters.
Among the toucans who were unable to register their votes on the application are Virgílio and former president of the Republic Fernando Henrique Cardoso, honorary president of the PSDB who governed Brazil between 1995 and 2002.
The party ensured that the votes computed on the platform are guaranteed and attributed the problem to the fact that the application did not deal with the demand of affiliates trying to vote. Araújo guaranteed in his speech after meeting with the candidates that there were no security problems with the program.
INTERNAL CRACK
The impasse generated by the technical problems over the resumption of the caucuses widens the internal division in the subtitle –especially between Doria and Leite–, which was expressed throughout the campaign, but not with as much force as this Sunday, despite the three candidates having done, earlier, speeches by the PSDB union upon arriving at the convention center in Brasilia where the in-person voting of the electronic ballots took place.
Most of the votes, however, should be computed by the app.
Before the meeting with Araújo, Doria said, without mentioning Leite’s name, that there would be those who wanted to “smear” the previous tucanas.
In his speech, shortly afterwards, the governor of Rio Grande do Sul said that the rejection of Doria pointed out in polls “makes impossible” the candidacy of the governor of São Paulo and that the PSDB should have a candidate with the face of the party, and not the party molding itself to the face of the candidate.
In addition to the exchange of barbs and technological problems, the previous tucanas also suffered from other controversies, such as the accusation made by Congresswoman Mara Rocha (PSDB-AC), who stated, without giving details or providing evidence, that they offered her money to vote in Doria.
A video in which she threatens to reveal who would have made the offer had she not been able to vote circulated on social media. The deputy declared that she would vote for Leite, at the same time that she declared herself a supporter of President Jair Bolsonaro and said that she would leave the PSDB to join the PL, the party that is currently the favorite to receive Bolsonaro, currently without party affiliation.
With the choice of a candidate for next year’s election, the PSDB seeks to regain the role it lost in Brazilian politics after Geraldo Alckmin’s poor performance in the 2018 elections.
But polls show both Doria and Leite with single-digit voting intentions, without reaching 5%, and quite distant from former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who leads the polls, and Bolsonaro.
(Additional reporting by Ueslei Marcelino, in Brasília)
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