The presidential candidates, Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro, met face to face to discuss their proposals, although the predominant tone of the meeting was marked, in line with the rest of the campaign, by the continuous crossing of accusations. The debate took place while the polls give ‘Lula’ a five-point lead over the current president, barely two weeks before the 156 million Brazilians eligible to vote decide the course of the country’s future.
An atypical debate in Brazil. The great stage set up for the confrontation between the two candidates for the Presidency was too small for the rivals to occupy the Planalto Palace. Two lecterns marked the place where the protagonists should be placed, but that was the place where they least decided to be.
The first to speak was President Bolsonaro. Until that moment, everything seemed to be going as planned, until ‘Lula’ da Silva took the floor, left his lectern, approached the camera and spoke directly to it, turning his back on her antagonist.
Thus began a true face-to-face, which sometimes took place less than a meter apart. “How many universities were created in your Government?”. It was one of the questions with which ‘Lula’ broke the ice against the current president of the country. Immediately afterwards, Bolsonaro avoided responding and changed the subject.
Throughout the meeting, the candidate of the Workers’ Party (PT) was filled with confidence, and took advantage of all the time he had to expose figures and reminders of what his time as head of the Executive had been, between 2003 and 2010 , while Bolsonaro constantly accused him of “doing nothing” on issues such as deforestation, among other aspects.
It seemed like a cordial meeting, even with some laughter in between that showed the tension that existed in the environment. “Come on, ‘Lula,’ stay here,” the former Army captain once asked his rival during one of the interventions.
The management of Covid, a topic used by ‘Lula’
“You delayed the vaccine. Your negligence caused the death of 600,000 people when more than half could have been saved,” candidate Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva complained to Jair Bolsonaro in a direct exchange of reproaches.
And it is that the issue of the handling of the Covid by the current Administration was taken advantage of by ‘Lula’ in the middle of the debate, recalling the “denialism” and the “mockery” with which Bolsonaro referred to the pandemic on numerous occasions.
At another time, the leftist claimed that the president had hidden his vaccination card so that it would not be known if he had applied any dose of the vaccines created against the disease and that he had not been able to visit any Covid patient in hospitals. from the country.
Bolsonaro jumped with a pandemic. He imitated pessoas sem ar, falou that I am turning jacaré and I don’t want to behave like a governor to take care of two povo problems. pic.twitter.com/vncakGnoBE
– Lula 13 (@LulaOficial) October 17, 2022
“No one in the history of the world has played with the pandemic and death as much as you,” he said, pointing to the president. “I never saw him at a funeral, but he did go to Queen Elizabeth’s,” he concluded.
Faced with the accusations of the union leader, Bolsonaro stressed that Brazil was “the country that vaccinated the most in the world.” He stressed that under his management “more than 500 million vaccines” were purchased and that “he was moved by each one of the deaths.”
The crossing of accusations
Both contenders accused each other of “being friends of criminals.” Bolsonaro affirmed that ‘Lula’ was “surrounded by traffickers” at a rally held last week in a Rio de Janeiro favela, while accusing him of “having a pact” with drug trafficker Carlos ‘Marcola’ Camacho, who is currently in prison
For his part, the former president criticized him for associating crime with poverty and took away the ex-military’s relations with the “militias”, as the mafias made up of active and retired policemen who control several favelas in Rio de Janeiro are known.
“Bolsonaro knows that the one who takes care of organized crime is not me. The one who is related to militiamen is not me. And he knows who is the organized crime that is related to Marielle’s death,” said ‘Lula’, referring to the execution of the activist and councilwoman Marielle Franco, opposed to the actions of the “militias” and murdered with four shots to the head in March 2018.
Corruption in the Government of ‘Lula’
The issue of corruption came out as a strategic counteroffensive by Bolsonaro. ‘Lula’ admitted that there was corruption in Petrobras, one of the largest companies in Latin America. However, he attributed the resolution of the case and the capture of those involved to the transparency of his Administration.
“If there was corruption, the thief who stole and finished was captured. If he was arrested it is because there was an investigation. There was no secrecy. Everything was transparent,” he said.
However, he knew how to turn the issue around in his defense, accusing Jair Bolsonaro of leaving thousands of people unemployed for wanting to close the companies that were implicated in the investigation process.
“I didn’t say there was no robbery,” he argued. “What I said is that to fight corruption it was not necessary to close the companies,” concluded the candidate for the Workers’ Party.
At another point, the far-right underlined that during the PT mandates the country lived in a “kleptocracy”, “in a country commanded by thieves”, to which ‘Lula’ replied that Brazil does not want to be governed by someone who bought “51 real estate with cash,” diverted from his Cabinet officials.
The issue of corruption in the mandates of the Workers’ Party is one of those that has done the most damage to the former president’s campaign. ‘Lula’ was charged and arrested for this cause, accusations for which he was later acquitted by Justice itself.
The debate took place at a time when the ‘Datafolha’ pollster places the leftist leader five points above Bolsonaro, with 49% of voter support compared to 44% for the current president. The data was released last Friday, with a margin of error of two percentage points.
With EFE and Reuters
