Elections in Brazil, a duel of titans: Bolsonaro vs. Lula

Eleven candidates are contesting the presidential elections in Brazil, but only two have a chance of reaching the second round: former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and current president Jair Bolsonaro. Both are political titans and eight out of 10 Brazilians say they will vote for one of them on Sunday, according to the Datafolha pollster. That will leave little room for other challengers.

That means that instead of new proposals and detailed programs, the two main candidates have mainly insisted on their experience and attacks on each other.

“Both candidates are well known, the vote is very crystallized,” said Nara Pavão, professor of Political Science at the Federal University of Pernambuco. She added that most voters made up their minds a long time ago.

The election could mark the return of the world’s fourth-largest democracy to a leftist government after four years of far-right policies, under the leadership of a president criticized for challenging democratic institutions, his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, 19 — which killed nearly 700,000 people — and an underperforming economy.

Polls show Lula with a commanding lead that could even give him a first-round victory without the need for a second round.

But even if that doesn’t happen, the vote itself marks a political comeback that seemed impossible for Lula, a 76-year-old former metal worker who rose from poverty to the presidency. Just four years ago, he was jailed as part of a widespread corruption investigation that targeted his Workers’ Party and turned Brazilian politics upside down.

Lula’s conviction for corruption and money laundering knocked him out of the 2018 electoral race when polls showed him as the favorite, allowing Bolsonaro, then a far-right fringe lawmaker, to claim victory.

A year later, however, the Supreme Court overturned Lula’s convictions amid accusations that the judge and prosecutors rigged the case against him, allowing him to run again now.

In many ways, Sunday’s vote is the race it should have been in 2018, and many voters are well aware of that.

Among them is Antônio dos Santos, who voted for Bolsonaro in 2018 but will vote for da Silva this time.

“What bothers me the most is that when the pandemic started, (Bolsonaro) seemed to be taking it as a joke,” said dos Santos, a 55-year-old hairdresser who lives in the working-class neighborhood of Rocinha in Rio. “Children dying, women losing their husbands. He was not the man I thought he was.”

“What matters to me is to see Brazil well, everyone working, everyone eating,” he said.

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