Brazil entered a high-voltage electoral campaign on Tuesday, with the far-right Jair Bolsonaro and the leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as protagonists of the most polarized presidential dispute in decades.
The former president starts with an advantage over the current president. The IPEC consultancy indicated on Monday that Lula gathers 44% of the voting intentions in the first round of October 2, compared to 32% for Bolsonaro, according to his latest survey.
Last month, the Datafolha Institute placed Lula with 47% and Bolsonaro with 29%.
This has been the start of the campaign.
Bolsonaro, with God and the Bible
President Bolsonaro, 67, starred in a rally on the same corner where he was stabbed in the 2018 campaign, in Juiz de Fora, in the state of Minas Gerais (southeast): “The city where I was reborn,” he said in the opening of his speech loaded with patriotic declarations and allusions to God and the Bible.
With a black jacket buttoned up to the neck, Bolsonaro reiterated his promise to fight against double-digit inflation, abortion, drugs and defend “private property”, brandishing the “communist” threat in Brazil if he loses the elections in October.
“Myth, myth, myth!” Hundreds of followers chanted. His wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, aroused equal or even more enthusiasm.
“She is the most important person here,” the president said of the first lady, a fervent evangelical who rose to prominence in the pre-campaign.
Michelle, dressed in a yellow shirt, invited the public to pray the Our Father, which moved many, AFP found.
In these elections, “our future is at stake, (…) that of the family, the country, the majority of the people who are here are faithful to God,” said Márcio Bargiona, a 55-year-old former police officer who aligned himself with the Bolsonarista motto “God, country, family and freedom.”
Lula returns to its origins
For his part, Lula will star in an act also loaded with symbolism.
The 76-year-old leftist former president, who is leading in the polls, will visit a car factory in Sao Bernardo do Campo, a Sao Paulo metropolitan region where he grew up as a union leader in the 1970s.
“Lula seeks to return to Sao Bernardo do Campo (…) because it favors his narrative as a representative of the workers,” Adriano Laureno, a political analyst at the consultancy firm Prospectiva, told AFP.
The pre-campaign was marked by Bolsonaro’s constant questioning -without evidence- of the reliability of the electronic voting system in Brazil. His criticism has sparked fears that he will not concede defeat.
Bolsonaro “is trying to weaken the electoral system,” deplored the NGO Human Rights Watch. “All candidates should reject baseless allegations of fraud,” he added in a note.
Lula, who regained his political rights in 2021 after the annulment of his convictions in the “Lava Jato” anti-corruption mega-case, continues to lead the polls, although the far-right seems to close the gap.
A feud of legacies
“It is the first time that we will have a legacy dispute, between a president and a former president,” says Laureno, who describes the election as the most “polarized” since redemocratization (1985).
These are two candidates “very well known, with high voting intentions and loyal followers,” he adds.
Bolsonaro has defined the campaign as a battle between “good and evil”, pointing out that Lula’s return to power could mean the installation of “communism” in Brazil.
Lula promises to restore the social gains for the most vulnerable classes that characterized his government, while harshly attacking Bolsonaro for the 680,000 deaths in Brazil during the pandemic.
The main concern of Brazilians, according to surveys, is the economic situation, marked in recent years by high levels of unemployment and inflation that has reduced Bolsonaro’s popularity.
Although the trend is for the president to improve his numbers with the recent drops in fuel prices and the increase in social assistance, the great unknown for analysts is whether he will arrive in time to reverse the numbers.
In addition to the explicit request for votes in public events, as of this Tuesday internet propaganda is allowed, where Bolsonaro especially has millions of followers on social networks.
More than 156 million Brazilians are eligible to vote on October 2, the first round of elections in which positions of deputies, senators and governors of the 26 states of the country are also disputed.
The two main candidates will meet tonight in Brasilia, where they are expected to attend the inauguration ceremony of Judge Alexandre de Moraes as president of the Superior Electoral Court.
