Lula da Silva and her team, this Saturday, during an election campaign in Sao Paulo. Photo: AFP
President Jair Bolsonaro and former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will meet face to face on Sunday, August 28, at 9pm, for the first time in that election campaign. It will be on the first presidential debate before the first round of elections, on 2 October.
According to the organizers of the meeting, held by the newspaper Folha of San Paolo, the UOL website and the Bandeirantes and Cultura television broadcasters, there will be no audience present at the venue. However, it will undoubtedly be an excellent testing ground for the two main candidates at Palazzo Planalto and promises to channel the attention of the Brazilian electorate.
IS is the most violent, polarized and ‘religious’ campaign since the return of direct elections in the democratic era, in 1989.
The religious vow, as it is called, confirms the strength of the evangelicals and their multiple neo-Pentecostal churches in the fate of the Brazilian ballot boxes.
Bolsonaro had already brought God into his campaign in 2018 (“Brazil above all. God above all”), but now he also has the speeches on faith and religious values by his wife Michelle.
In a country with strong African roots and the practice of Afro-Brazilian religions, in addition to the ecumenical tradition, a sort of struggle between ‘good and evil’ has begun to establish a ‘holy war’.
Michelle posted a video in which Lula participates in a ritual of candomblé and added that Lula “gave her soul to win those elections”. She previously stated in a speech in a temple in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, that Planalto “was consecrated to demons, but today it is consecrated to the Lord Jesus” (referring to the religious line of the president’s husband).
Lula replied that she will respect the Bible and the Constitution. But there is more than belief and saints to this campaign that officially began last week.
electoral artillery
Aided by government measures in the fuel sector, deflation was recorded in Brazil in July and the government distributed Auxilio Brasil social aid of 600 reais to the poorest until the end of this year alone.
In the mosaic of the presidential campaign there is also the identity with one or the other candidate. All the others together, including Ciro Gomes, of the PDT, and Simone Tebet, of the MDB, do not reach 10% vote in the polls, confirming that the “third way” would have no chance of winning, if the elections were today.
On Friday 26, two days before the debate, the electoral schedule of the country’s radio and television broadcasters begins. Despite the lesser impact than before, due to changes in digital communication, the expectation is that Bolsonaro will target the corruption scandals involving the former president.
“There is no doubt about it. In addition to saying that Lula is a communist and that he is an ally of Cuba, Bolsonaro will say that he is a thief, “said a Brasilian politician who follows the two campaigns.
The former president must insist that poverty has decreased and that 30 million Brazilians have ceased to be poor while in Palazzo Planalto (2003-2011). And that was a time when big entrepreneurs and banks also grew up.
The polls
The latest polls suggest it (BTG-FSB, PoderData, DataFolha, Ipec). advantage for Lula around 15%, but with Bolsonaro growing which is slightly higher than the margin of error.
For now, the expectation is that there will be a second round on October 30th. According to the DataFolha survey, released last week, Lula grows up among the richest and Bolsonaro among the evangelicals.
The complaint was the first made after the distribution of Auxilio Brasil, aid of 600 reais to the most needy.
In relation to the survey released by DataFolha at the end of July, Lula remained with 47% and Bolsonaro went from 29% to 32%. The difference between the two dropped from 18% to 15%.
Everything seems to be moving. Lula has greater support in the Brazilian southeast (São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro) and the northeast (Bahia, Pernambuco, where Lula was born, and other states) and is linked to Bolsonaro in the rest of the country.
“We do not exclude anything. One or the other can be elected because the campaign has, in fact, just begun, “says former minister Andrea Matarazzo, who was part of the PSDB, the party of former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
The BTG-FSB survey indicated Lula with 45% and Bolsonaro with 34%, in the first round – a difference of just 11 points – and Lula the winner in the second round with 53% and Bolsonaro with 38%.
The goal of the current president, says Planalto, is to bring the definition of the elections to the second round, when the polarization is usually even stronger and it could escalate its attacks and criticisms of the former president.
And the expectation is that he will stop criticizing the electronic ballot boxes, adopted in Brazil since 1996, after the president of the Higher Electoral Court, Minister Alexandre de Moraes, pronounced himself in defense of the Brazilian electoral system.
Moraes was cheered by almost everyone except Bolsonaro, the first lady and her ministers, including Foreign Minister Carlos França.
Bolsonaro and former presidents José Sarney, Michel Temer, Dilma Rousseff and Lula were present at the inauguration ceremony in Moraes, who attracted attention.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso was not there because he is recovering from a broken leg. The other absent was Fernando Collor de Mello.
The 156 million Brazilian voters eligible to vote in this year’s general elections are accompanied by scenes such as the president grabbing a youtuber in front of the entrance to the Alvorada Palace, the president’s official residence in Brasilia, which has gone viral.
The youtuber called him Tchutchuca (“dear”, they say “chuchucá”) from the “centrão”, the conglomeration of hybrid politicians who vote according to their circumstances and abandon ship when they perceive that the president is losing his strength.
Be that as it may, because of this scene, because of the religious dispute or the threat of a group of businessmen to carry out a “coup” in case of Lula’s victory, the situation has not yet degenerated …
This is not the “cordial man” campaign, as historian Sergio Buarque de Holanda identified the Brazilian in his book “Roots of Brazil”, because that “cordial man”, from what we see in the countryside, does not exist today. .
CB
Marcia Carmo
Source: Clarin
