Conservative technocrat for Lula, uncompromising general for Bolsonaro: even the candidates for the Brazilian vice-presidency diametrically opposite profilesin the shadow of the candidates for the supreme office.

At first glance, the election of Geraldo Alckmin, 69, as vice-president of former Social Democratic president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) could they seem incongruous. Although if you see clearly, not so much.

In 2006 they both faced each other in the second round of the presidential elections and Lula was re-elected with 60% of the vote.

Geraldo Alckmin, faithful representative of Brazilian centrism

Alckmin was then a member of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), a historical center-right movement which he co-founded in 1988 and who ruled Brazil from 1995 to 2002, with Fernando Henrique Cardoso as president.

To those who consider his alliance with Lula unnatural, this former governor of São Paulo replies that the time has come to unite in defense of democracy, threatened, according to him, by the far right Jair Bolsonaro. The PT also addressed the historical positions of the PSDB.

“Some may find it strange. I played the second round against Lula in 2006, but the debate went to another level, we have never endangered democracy“, he said in late March, when he joined the center-left Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), which laid the foundations for his alliance with the former president.

“It is important to open our eyes and have the humility to understand that today (Lula) is the one who best reflects the hopes of the Brazilian people,” added this trained doctor, born in Pindamonhangaba, in the state of Sao Paulo.

An austere technocrat, Alckmin acquired a reputation as a solid manager during his four terms as governor of São Paulo (2001-2006 and 2011-2018), the most populous state in Brazil, which he reassured the businessmen.

Far from being a tribune, this bald man with thin glasses received an unflattering nickname: “Picolé de Chuchu” (“Cayote ice cream”, in Spanish), in reference to a tropical vegetable related to zucchini and tasteless.

But during the campaign he appropriated this nickname with humor: “Squid (Lula, in Portuguese) and cayote go very well together,” he said, inspiring culinary recipes posted on social networks.

A general equal to Jair Bolsonaro

Bolsonaro, on the other hand, preferred Walter Braga Netto as his running mate, a man he trusted and had located in strategic positions of his government before embarking on the race for re-election.

His profile is different from that of the outgoing vice president, Hamilton Mourao, also a general, but who has openly demonstrated his independence from the head of state, with often more moderate posts.

Braga Netto, 65, is considered a An inveterate Bolsonarist and more discreet.

In March 2021, shortly after being appointed Minister of Defense, this former Army Chief of Staff, who joined the reserve a year earlier, caused a major scandal by saying that the 1964 military coup should be “celebrated” as a “Movement” that had made it possible to “pacify” the country.

Originally from Belo Horizonte (southeast) and a general since 2009, he was head of security at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

But it was in 2018 when he became known to the general public, when he assumed the leadership of the military command under which the security forces of the state of Rio de Janeiro were placed. fight organized crime.

The military intervention, which lasted just under a year, had an uneven balance, with declines in some indicators of violence, but a significant increase in deaths during police operations.

The short-haired general, who never ran for elections, joined the Bolsonaro administration in February 2020 in the key position of Minister of the Civil House, the president’s right-hand man in the government.

This position is so strategic that it was he who coordinated the policy to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. But his performance was judged uneven and disastrous by most epidemiologists, in a country where the virus has caused more than 687,000 deaths.

Source: AFP and Clarin