Supporters of Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva react to the partial results after the conclusion of general election polls in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sunday October 2, 2022. MATIAS DELACROIX / AP
The crowd is silent. The gaze is deep and heavy on Cinelândia, an iconic square in central Rio de Janeiro surrounded by skyscrapers and prestigious Art Deco buildings. However, it was several hundred red-clad activists who came to celebrate the left’s return to power in Brazil. The beers were ready, frozen as they should be, the smiles and the victory songs too. But the voters decided otherwise.
At the end of the first round of presidential elections on Sunday 2 October, former left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva led with 48.43% of the vote against 43.2% for the outgoing far-right leader. which achieves a far higher number of points than expected by the opinion research institutes. Barely 5 points or just 6 million votes (out of 123 million total votes) separate two men who will meet on October 30 for an uncertain second round.
For the left, on the other hand, everything had started well. The day before the election, the latest polls gave Lula a 15-point lead and a good chance of winning the first ballot. The most popular president in Brazil’s history thought he could make short work of his successor, who was discredited by his disastrous management of the economy, Covid-19 and the environment. At the head of a vast coalition of nine political parties, the leader of the Labor Party (PT) walked away with confidence.
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So, on the morning of October 2, Lula, along with his new wife Rosângela, went to vote for All Smiles in Sao Bernardo do Campo, a working class suburb of Sao Paulo where he was born a union leader. “This is a very important day for me! “Starts ex-metal worker recalling four years ago he was jailed for corruption and unable to run for president. Lula then grabs his ballot and brings it to his lips. A kiss of democracy, like the announcement of an inevitable victory.
Far from the outpouring of victory in 2018
450 kilometers further east, in Rio de Janeiro, Jair Bolsonaro conveys a completely different picture. Grumpy-faced, under a gray and rainy sky, the outgoing president shows up at around 9am at his polling station in Vila Militar, a Carioca neighborhood dotted with army barracks. No member of his family accompanies him: the head of state is surrounded only by his bodyguards in sunglasses and a handful of allies. Among them MP Daniel Silveira, a former police officer with a shaved head and the build of a wrestler who was sentenced to eight years in prison for his attacks on democracy, whom Bolsonaro eventually pardoned…
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