The two political heavyweights vying to grow to be Brazil’s subsequent president have locked horns throughout the final tv debate earlier than a momentous election with profound implications for the Amazon rainforest, the international local weather emergency and the way forward for one among the world’s largest democracies.
The former leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro confronted off in Rio at the studios of Brazil’s largest broadcaster, with eve of election polls giving Lula a slender however not unassailable lead.
During the tetchy encounter, Lula accused Bolsonaro of catastrophically mishandling a Covid outbreak that has killed practically 700,000 Brazilians, arming organised crime by loosening gun legal guidelines, and trashing the Amazon and Brazil’s worldwide fame. “Brazil is more isolated than Cuba …. We have become a pariah,” the 77-year-old leftist mentioned, castigating Bolsonaro’s “insane behaviour”.
Bolsonaro, who was visibly nervous and misplaced his footing on stage a number of occasions, repeatedly referred to as Lula a liar and highlighted the corruption scandals that tarnished the 14 years through which the ex-president’s Workers’ social gathering (PT) ruled from 2003 to 2016. “Lula, you’re a crook,” Bolsonaro fumed. “Your government was a champion in corruption.”
“He’s a one-note samba,” Lula hit again, citing one among bossa nova legend Tom Jobim’s most well-known songs.
In his closing assertion, Bolsonaro grew to become confused and introduced that, God keen, he could be re-elected to Brazil’s congress, the place he served for practically three many years till reinventing himself as an anti-establishment outsider earlier than being elected president in 2018.
This yr’s election – extensively seen as the most necessary since the finish of Brazil’s 21-year dictatorship in 1985 – has cut up Latin America’s most populous nation, with round half of voters rejecting Bolsonaro and nearly as many spurning Lula.
Lula voters view Bolsonaro as an incompetent authoritarian who has wrecked the atmosphere and Brazil’s place in the world, bungled its Covid response, and divided society along with his radical, hate-filled rhetoric. Bolsonaro supporters think about Lula, a reasonable two-term president, from 2003 to 2010, a dishonest “communist” risk whose dealings with leftist authoritarians similar to Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega make a mockery of his declare to be battling for democracy.
On Friday, Bolsonaro’s key worldwide ally, Donald Trump, waded into the debate, urging Brazilians to reject Lula, “a radical left lunatic who will quickly destroy your country”.
Lula supporters worry that Bolsonaro – a dictatorship-admiring former military captain who has hinted he’ll problem a end result he considers “abnormal” – may provoke Trump-style turmoil if he loses. Those fears grew final week after one among Bolsonaro’s sons used unproven allegations of electoral foul play to declare his father was the sufferer of “the greatest electoral fraud ever seen” – nearly equivalent language to Trump’s after he misplaced the 2020 US election to Joe Biden.
At Friday’s debate, Bolsonaro appeared to commit to respect the end result. “He with the most votes wins,” he mentioned.
Whichever aspect prevails, tens of tens of millions of residents are probably to be shattered. “I’ll move to Finland the next day,” if Lula wins, mentioned Dhennis Wheberth, a Bolsonaro activist and evangelical pastor – his motion stays overwhelmingly loyal to the president.
Henrique Vieira, a progressive church chief who helps Lula, mentioned re-electing Bolsonaro would give him a clean cheque to persecute leftist rivals and even perhaps to attempt to shut congress.
“I believe Bolsonaro’s re-election could deal a fatal blow to Brazilian democracy … he’s a fascist and an authoritarian,” warned Vieira, who was just lately elected to congress for the leftist Socialism and Liberty social gathering (PSL).
“Defeating Bolsonaro and electing Lula is a historic task,” mentioned Vieira, who has spent current weeks battling to deconstruct Bolsonaro’s picture as an “upstanding” Christian, utilizing road protests and social media movies that decision him the “anti-Christ”.
However, Lula’s allies have voiced cautious optimism in current days, with polls suggesting his lead over Bolsonaro has grown to round 6%.
“I feel a mix of hope and certainty that we will win, but anxiety, too. This is one of the most important elections in Brazilian history,” mentioned Cristiano Silveira, a lawmaker from Lula’s social gathering in Minas Gerais, one of the country’s key swing states.
Backers of Bolsonaro, 67, insist they’ll triumph, noting that first-round polls underestimated his assist. Lula received the 2 October vote with 48.4% however Bolsonaro did significantly higher than anticipated, taking 43.2% slightly than the 36% or 37% forecast.
Thomas Traumann, a Rio-based political analyst, predicted an excellent tighter end result than the 2014 election, when the PT candidate, Dilma Rousseff, beat her opponent, Aécio Neves, by 51.6% to 48.4% – a margin of three.45m votes. Neves’ social gathering controversially – and unsuccessfully – challenged the end result.
Traumann mentioned he believed Bolsonaro’s marketing campaign had been broken by stories that his finance minister, Paulo Guedes, was contemplating freezing the minimal wage, and by a violent grenade and gun attack on federal police by one among the president’s radical allies. “[But] it’s going to be very close. It’s too close to call,” he added, pointing to deep-rooted public hostility to the PT and a Bolsonaro authorities spending spree designed to entice poorer voters with welfare funds. A Reuters evaluation discovered his administration pledged to splash out 273bn reais (£44.4bn) in the lead-up to the election.
“I think it’s going to be 51%-49%,” Traumann joked. “I just can’t say for who.”
Outside the TV studio the place Lula and Bolsonaro have been crossing swords there was no signal of the gulf between their supporters being bridged.
Claudia Nunes, a 50-year-old physiotherapist who was a part of a small pro-Bolsonaro crowd, mentioned she was satisfied her candidate would prevail. “Our flag will never be red,” she declared. “We hate Lula …. He’s a crook and a scumbag.”
Across the road, Thulio Siviero, a 37-year-old PT activist, mentioned: “We feel really anxious. We are holding our hearts in our hands. But we are confident in victory.”
Nunes, who was sporting the brilliant yellow soccer shirt that has grow to be an emblem of Bolsonaro’s far-right nationalist motion, was unconvinced. “Bolsonaro is going to win,” she claimed. “Lula will only win if it’s rigged.”
