The polls were closed in Brazil, where more than 120 million Brazilians were able to vote in a polarized first round of elections this could decide whether the country brings Lula da Silva back to power or whether the fourth largest democracy in the world keeps its far-right leader in office for another four years.
The duel, which began with the opening of the polls at 8 am in Brasilia, pitted the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, against his political nemesis, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. There were nine other candidates, but their support lagged far behind that of Bolsonaro and Lula.
Recent opinion polls have given Lula a large advantage. The latest survey by Datafolha published on Saturday showed that 50% of respondents who intended to vote for a candidate said they would opt for Lula, compared with 36% for Bolsonaro. The company surveyed 12,800 people, with a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.
Lula, a 76-year-old former metalworker specializing in turning, was the co-founder of the Workers’ Party in São Paulo and led the country for two terms between 2003 and 2010.
What is the risk
In these elections he did a strong preference for the political center and eluded details of economic plans, cabinet ministers or planned policies on inflation, employment, climate change and the crucial issue of agriculture.
He was also elusive on the thorniest issues on the Latin American agenda. In relation to the dictatorships of Venezuela or Nicaragua, avoid being critical and he limits himself to defending the “sovereignty of the peoples”, although he says that his will is “an increasingly democratic Latin America”.
He also proposes to rebuild bridges with the EU, but warns that the terms of the agreement with Mercosur must be “reviewed”. And he is in favor of the recomposition of regional organizations such as Unasur clearly looking for a Brazilian leadership in the region.
At the end of last year he had already advanced that position in a tour of Europe, where he was received by the presidents of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, and of France, Emmanuel Macron, and by the German president, Olaf Scholz, when he was about to replace Angela Merkel. “We have to talk to the whole world again, because a country like Brazil cannot be an international pariah “.
In this campaign, Lula garnered the support of celebrities such as musicians Caetano Veloso and Anitta, and surrounded by unexpected figures, such as former Federal Supreme Court Justice Joaquim Barbosa, who led the trial of the voting buying scandal to Congress, the so-called Mensalao, which marked the PT leader’s first government.
Lula, who left the presidency with an approval rating of over 80% but with an image clouded by the Lava Jato corruption scandal, continued to embrace the achievements of his first two presidencies as the economy took a hit. internationally favorable wind, a circumstance that the leader of the PT was able to exploit much better than his neighbors, particularly in Argentina.
provocative president
Bolsonaro was a controversial figure, but with partial support from the more traditional sectors of the evangelical church, including business and banking, support that was shared with Lula. But he faced strong resistance among the female electorate, the young and the poorest, after a turbulent handling of the pandemic that resulted in 686,000 deaths.
The far-right leader had won the support of Brazilian football club star Neymar. A 67-year-old former army captain and deputy director, Bolsonaro focused on both his government and the campaign itself in the exaltation of weapons, of moral values (“God, country, family”).
He also tried to be aggressive especially with his rival who, in the debates, he called “thief and traitor of the country” for the unprecedented corruption that occurred in the last PT governments led by Dilma Rousseff, ousted in the middle of his second term for impeachment in Congress.
Provocative, “history can repeat itself,” Bolsonaro warned on September 7, during a speech at the Independence Day celebrations, in which cited numerous historical dates, among other things, many alluding to the military uprisings and the 1964 coup d’état that he claimed from his time as a legislator.
At the beginning of his administration in 2019, Bolsonaro aligned Brazil with Donald Trump’s United States, but distanced himself from 2021, when Joe Biden took office, whose victory he recognized just a month after the election. . Also left the European Union, protesting against his aggressive policies for the Amazon.
Likewise, it created friction with China, albeit less so due to the importance of Brazil’s trade partnership with that country, leaving Latin America far on the sidelines. Since January 2019, Bolsonaro has only traveled to Chile and Argentina, during the governments of Sebastián Piñera and Mauricio Macri respectively, and visited Ecuador for the inauguration of Guillermo Lasso and Uruguay, for the inauguration of Luis Lacalle Pou. .
In his recent speech before the United Nations General Assembly, Bolsonaro he cited only two Latin American countries: Nicaragua, to offer asylum to persecuted clerics, and Venezuela, in a new criticism of Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship and campaign, has disqualified most of the governments in the region, which it labels as “communists”.
He was a great ally of Trump, who had supported him in this election. Steve Bannon, advisor to the former president and founder of a far-right global movement whose coordinator for Latin America is deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, one of the president’s sons, had indicated these elections as crucial.
Brazil. Special delivery
Source: Clarin
