Brazil decides between Lula and Bolsonaro after an aggressive campaign

After an aggressive campaign, Brazil reaches the second round of the presidential election this Sunday between the far-right Jair Bolsonaro and the leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, both leaders with strong popular rejection. That combat of “rejections” can determine who wins the presidency of the country.

The former leftist president, 77, He prevailed in the first round with 48% of the votes against 43% of the far-right president who, however, achieved a better result than the polls predicted.

The latest published polls continued to give Lula favoritism for the crucial appointment this Sunday. The Datafolha pollster gave him the winner on Thursday with 53% of the votes.

The attacks on networks and in the television debate on Friday They have increased the climate of aggressiveness in the hours before the vote. Once again, misinformation has led to many of the accusations between the two candidates, something that has worsened between the two electoral rounds.

The Bolsonarist side accused Lula of wanting to close churches, promote “gender ideology” in schools and make a pact with the “devil”. The Lulista campaign entered the mud and counterattacked by associating Bolsonaro with pedophilia and cannibalism.

Fear of non-recognition of results

Bolsonaro seemed confident after the result of the first round, much better than the one that the polls gave himbut at least two events in the last week may have complicated his progress: statements by his economy minister, Paul Guedes, on a possible decoupling of the increase in the minimum wage to the value of inflation, and the unusual reaction of a former Bolsonarist deputy who, when arrested, responded with grenades and shots that injured police officers.

Cornered, Bolsonaro, who had recently put aside his criticism of the electronic ballot box system, this week raised a new focus of suspicion by denouncing alleged irregularities in the dissemination of advertising pieces on radio stations in the northeast of the country.

The Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) He dismissed the allegations for lack of evidence and warned the president’s campaign that the complaint filed could constitute an “electoral crime” and an attempt to “disrupt the second round.”

Many analysts maintain that Bolsonaro is preparing the ground to question the results in case he loses the elections, but that may depend largely on the margin that exists in the result of both candidates.

The shadows of both candidates

Lula, a former metallurgical worker, was president twice between 2003 and 2010 and was imprisoned in the framework of the “Lava Jato” anti-corruption mega-cause. But he was politically resurrected after the annulment of his convictions for procedural irregularities.

Bolsonaro, a 67-year-old former Army captain, is seeking re-election after a turbulent term, marked by 688,000 deaths left by the pandemic, alarming levels of Amazon deforestation and institutional tensions.

The crucial religious vow

Visits to temples, photos with priests, letters to the faithful, and so on a long list of campaign measures that both candidates have not hesitated to carry out to win the religious vote, an electoral key. Efforts to win that vote, in what the press called a “religious war” They continued until the final stretch of the campaign.

In Brazil, a country where 215 million people live, mostly Catholics, but with a growing influence of the evangelical churches -a third of the electorate-, 59% consider religion as an important factor when deciding the vote, according to the Datafolha consultancy.

Bolsonaro has broad support from evangelicals, an asset that he has exploited during his campaign. The current president, a 67-year-old Catholic later baptized in the Jordan River by a famous evangelical pastor, retains 65% of the voting intentions among evangelicals against 31% for Lula, support that he has sustained with the defense of the traditional family. and the Bible or the appointment of a “terribly evangelical” judge for the Court.

In his electoral crusade, he also had his wife michellea devout, soft-spoken evangelical, who traveled the country to shore up religious support by calling the contest a battle between “good and evil” and referring to Lula as the “devil.”

Amazon: global concern absent in the election

Outside Brazil, the situation of the world’s largest tropical forest, considered a key factor in curbing climate change, is seen as a crucial issue in the presidential election. Nevertheless, fires and deforestation have been almost absent from the polarized campaign between the far-right Jair Bolsonaro and the leftist Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, and many voters have other concerns beyond what is happening in that vast region of Brazil, thousands of kilometers away.

For Brazil’s indigenous peoples, the struggle can sometimes be lonely, even after four years denouncing President Bolsonaro’s policies as “violent” and environmentally damaging. Most Brazilians have never visited the Amazon. Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, is 2,800 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro. It is almost the same distance between Rio and Santiago de Chile.

The average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon during the Bolsonaro government increased 75% compared to the previous decade, according to official figures.

Lula also dealt with this problem during his two governments (2003-2010), and referred on a few occasions to the situation in the jungle during the campaign, especially in visits to the region and in interviews with the international press. But in general the matter has been largely absent from a campaign marked by disinformation and extreme polarizationwith episodes of political violence.

(With AFP, Brazilian press and RFI own sources)