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Brazilians will vote on Sunday October 2 to elect their new president. The Congress will also be renewed, as well as the governors and the regional parliaments. Former left-wing president Lula is the big favorite for the elections, he could even win in the first round. Although the Amazon region has suffered greatly under Jair Bolsonaro, both when it comes to the environment and the Covid-19 pandemic, opinions remain highly divided.
From our special envoy to Manaus, Achim Lippold.
Eliane, 60, is shopping in the city center. On the back window of her car, she has pasted a large poster of Jair Bolsonaro: she belongs to an association of doctors who support the outgoing president. Eliane is a “Bolsonarista at heart,” she tells us. The outgoing president has launched “a revolution” in the country, improving “hospitals, schools and roads.”
Also read: ‘Lula’s best support is Bolsonaro’
What do you think of the president’s management of Covid-19, which a Brazilian parliamentary commission has considered “criminal”? “Everything he could do against Covid, he did. There are many lies circulating about it,” says the supporter of Jair Bolsonaro. “They are legends, false news. I can assure you that everything that is said in Europe, the United States and other countries about the president in relation to Covid is a lie,” she maintains.
A candidacy born of anger against Bolsonaro
A speech that stuns Wanda Witoto, an indigenous nurse who lives in an Amerindian neighborhood in northern Manaus, nicknamed “Parque das Tribos”. According to her, her community has “experienced a lot of violence during this pandemic” by the Brazilian authorities: “The pandemic has marked me forever. We have experienced the abandonment of the State in an even more cruel way. My community did not receive any help from the Ministry of Health or the municipal authorities. No ambulance came to pick up the sick, people died and the only ones who came were the funeral homes to pick up the bodies and throw them in the mass graves of Manaus, “he explains.
Also read: In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro retains the powerful evangelical vote
Nearly two years later, the emotion is still strong in his voice as he recalls this painful period. Shaken by this tragedy, Wanda Witoto has made a decision: enter politics. She presents herself as a candidate for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies of Brasilia to better defend the interests of her people against pressure from agribusiness.
“I don’t see any deforestation”
The young woman, very active on social networks, has received the support of Lula, but she still has difficulties convincing some of her indigenous neighbors. In the “Parque das Tribos”, where some 12,000 indigenous people of some 30 different ethnic groups live, posters of Jair Bolsonaro are clearly visible.
Also read: Bolsonaro and Lula throw insults and accusations at each other in a television debate
One of the outgoing president’s supporters is Chicao, a first aid worker for the Manaus ambulance service. He will vote for Jair Bolsonaro next Sunday. While the fires devastate the region and the smoke from the southern Amazon reaches Manaus, the native doubts the seriousness of the deforestation: “I don’t know, there is talk of deforestation but when I go up the Negro River towards Santa Isabel, I don’t see any deforestation. Just forest, and more forest. Deforestation is probably higher in the states of Para and Maranhao, along the highways,” he says.
“Our country has lost its feathers”
Between the destruction of the environment and the catastrophic management of Covid, Jair Bolsonaro’s balance in the Amazon is heavy, according to journalist Katia Brasil, director of the AmazoniaReal news website.
Not to mention the precariousness that has increased enormously: “Today there are people who are starving in Brazil. The poor, the blacks and the indigenous. The latter, who live and work in the suburbs of the big cities, go hungry. We have to help these suburbs, start education programs, so that the country can return to normality,” explains the journalist, without hiding some emotion.
Read also: Neymar publishes video in support of Bolsonaro
According to her, Brazil has lost “many feathers” with President Jair Bolsonaro. But why is it still so popular in Manaus, the city so devastated by Covid? “We experienced two tragedies during the pandemic, the lack of hospital beds and the lack of oxygen. But I have the impression that the inhabitants of this city have forgotten it, they have anesthetized it,” says Katia Brasil.
“If Bolsonaro does not win, it is because there was fraud”
Katia Brasil eagerly awaits a victory for Lula, if possible in the first round. For Eliane, the fervent Bolsonarist, this scenario would necessarily mean that the elections are rigged: “If Bolsonaro does not win in the first round, it can be ensured that there was fraud, that ballot boxes were stolen and that there were irregularities,” she asserts.
These statements are currently widely shared on social networks and constitute the core of the “fake news” launched by the militants of the outgoing president. His party, the Liberal Party, a few days before the elections, also questioned the reliability of the electoral system. As a result of this speech, Eliane, like thousands of Bolsonaro supporters, has already decided not to recognize a possible Lula victory.
