Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro waves to supporters while being protected by a security officer at a campaign rally in Belem, Brazil September 22, 2022.
the President of Brazilthe extreme right Jair Bolsonaroreaches the first round of October 2nd with the Challenge to keep alive the expectation of re-election.
This ex-captain of the nostalgic army of the military dictatorship (1964-1985), 67 years old, will try on Sunday to guarantee a second round on October 30, with ex-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, favorite in the polls.
According to the latest polls, the President faces an unfavorable scenario, even with the possibility of being defeated by Lula in the first round.
Bolsonaro went from warning early in the campaign that possible fraud was brewing — alleging flaws in the electronic voting system without evidence — to attacking the polling stations.
“The lying Datafolha is not here, here is our +Datapueblo+,” Bolsonaro said Sept. 7 in a performance to a crowd in Brasilia.
The President has portrayed the elections as a battle between “good and evil”.
In his nearly four years in power, Bolsonaro has not changed his penchant for outbursts, institutional challenges and the polarization of Brazilian society.
Admirers of former US President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro continues to have the support of a large segment of those who supported him in 2018: the influential gun and agricultural lobbies and the large evangelical constituency.
At the same time, it has tried to attract the most vulnerable sections of the population with new social benefits.
Portal/Adriano Machado
His mandate has been marked by crises, starting with the Covid-19 pandemicwhich he defined as “little flu” while criticizing vaccines that could turn you into a “crocodile”.
After defying preventive measures and the vaccination campaign, Bolsonaro claimed he was “not guilty of anything,” despite a parliamentary commission of inquiry defending his charges of “crimes against humanity.” To date, 685,000 people have died from Covid in Brazil.
With the same defiant attitude faced nearly 140 impeachment motions tabled in Parliament and the opening of several preliminary investigations against him before the Federal Court of Justice, in particular for disinformation.
For this reason, he attacked the judiciary head-on and threatened to no longer comply with the decisions of the Supreme Court.
Platforms such as YouTube and Facebook also took action against right-wing extremists and removed some of his videos with false information.
Bolsonaro despises traditional media and communicates directly with his millions of subscribers on social networks.
As of last week, he has decided to speak on live webcasts every day until election Sunday.
The Brazilian President traveled to the UK for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II
“Outsider”
At the international level, he sharply criticized several foreign leaders was “neutral” on the invasion of Ukraine ordered by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, whom he met in Moscow weeks before the war.
One of the most heated controversies was with French President Emmanuel Macron in 2019, when the Amazon burned and deforestation under his mandate broke records.
Bolsonaro came to power with an anti-corruption speech and presented himself as an “outsider” despite being a federal MP for three decades.
This blue-eyed man with simple syntax, often with his shirt open, seduced 55% of Brazilians despite his racist, misogynistic and homophobic statements.
He had also pledged to end the violence, the “lazy” left and the economic crisis that the pandemic nonetheless helped exacerbate.
His repeatedly reshuffled government fell into the hands of several military officers, including Vice President Hamilton Mourao.
Neymar supports Bolsonaro for the Brazilian elections.
“God Above All”
Jair Messias Bolsonaro was born in 1955 in Glicério, a small town in the interior of São Paulo, into a family of Italian origin. He learned to fish and prospecting for gold from his father, Percy Geraldo Bolsonaro, a “garimpeiro” in the Pará Jungle in the 1980s.
He attended the Military Academy in Rio de Janeiro and entered military life, punctuated by episodes of disobedience.
In 27 years as an MP in Brasilia, he was the author of only two bills that were approved.
The family defender, who describes himself as a Catholic, has five children from three marriages.
His current wife, Michelle, is a passionate evangelical who rose to prominence during the election campaign, in which Bolsonaro once again used his motto: “Brazil above all. God above everything”.
Bolsonaro is very close to his three eldest sons, all elected officials, who are currently under investigation on suspicion of corruption or spreading false information. After a knife attack in the middle of the 2018 election campaign, Bolsonaro suffers from possible chronic intestinal problems that have brought him to the hospital several times.
With information from AFP
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The most poignant phrases of the confrontation between Bolsonaro and Lula during the presidential debate in Brazil