The election campaign began this Tuesday in Brazil with an unreleased image that nicely sums up how the elections will be presented: hand in hand between two veterans, the first labor president and the first of the far right. Although both have been active in politics for decades, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 76, and Jair Bolsonaro, 67, had never met in person. This afternoon both took part in a ceremony in Brasilia, a reasonable distance away, with the members of the third protagonist of this election, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), the arbiter who will have the final say if the most pessimistic forecasts come true and Bolsonaro questions that Result. Lula’s lead over the dwindling Bolsonaro is 18 points. 45 days left for the first round.
The picture of Lula with Bolsonaro made photographers suffer. The second was on the podium of the authorities, the second opposite, along with former presidents of Oreos.
On October 2, Brazilian voters will also vote to renew the entire Chamber of Deputies, a third of the Senate, the 26 governors and all the state legislatures. The latest Datafolha poll, the most prestigious among polls, gave Lula 47% in the first round in late July, compared to 29% for Bolsonaro. The left triumphs among the poor and the youth; the extreme right, between men and evangelicals. It has not yet been confirmed that the favorites will face each other again in an election debate.
Posters of the two favorite candidates for the presidential elections on October 2 this year will be unveiled in Brasilia this Tuesday UESLEI MARCELINO (Portal)
Each of the favorites wanted to print their stamp on this first day of action. Lula’s first act was outside the gates of the Volkswagen factory in São Bernardo do Campo, south of São Paulo, in a nod to the workers’ struggles that catapulted him into politics four decades ago. Instead, Bolsonaro prefers to look back four years. And he has traveled to Juiz da Fora, the city of Minas Gerais, where he was stabbed to death by a lunatic during the 2018 election campaign.
There, the president regained the messianic tone that brought him victory at the time: “Brazil was on the brink of collapse, with ethical, moral and economic problems, and was marching towards socialism with great strides,” Bolsonaro proclaimed in a speech that he stopped surrounded by evangelical pastors after a cyclists’ march. At his side is his wife Michelle, who appeals to the most ultra-conservative vote and strives to soften her husband’s image among women, one of the groups in which he is most rejected.
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For his part, Lula has drawn on the legacy of his two terms as Prime Minister (2002-2010). The left called on his supporters to mobilize on the two fields where this struggle is taking place: “Let’s occupy the streets and networks,” he told them, before appealing to hope: “We are an idea and nobody can imprison an idea . They’ve killed a lot of flowers, but they won’t stop spring. We are alive and strong. With love we will conquer hate,” he said as he boarded a bus in front of one of the factories where he became a union leader before founding the Workers’ Party.
Lula’s campaign is nostalgic, evoking the golden years when millions of Brazilians, living in squalor, prospered before lifting out of poverty. Bolsonaro not only appeals to fear, but also to the achievements of his governments. Make this high-tension duel a battle between good and evil.
Should none of the candidates achieve an absolute majority of valid votes, there would be a second ballot on October 30th. Lula will do whatever it takes to win in the first round, which none of his predecessors have done in the 21st century. To do this, he has picked Gerando Alckmin as number two, a former São Paulo governor whom he defeated in the 2006 presidential election and who in 2018 embodied the crushing defeat of the centre-right before the right swing that led to Bolsonaro’s victory. None of the remaining candidates garnered more than 8% support.
Members of the Minas Gerais military police walk in front of a Brazilian flag with Bolsonaro’s face on August 16, the day the presidential campaigns open. MAURO PIMENTEL (AFP)
The exposure of Facebook, Telegram, YouTube, WhatsApp and the other social networks featured in this campaign is huge as they are the main channel through which millions of Brazilians get information. Given the influence attributed to fake news in 2018, the fight against misinformation by the electoral authorities has intensified. But the amount of dubious or simply wrong information is enormous and spreads at lightning speed. One of the untruths hounded by a Bolsonarist MP that has become most pervasive in recent weeks is that Lula will close churches if he wins the election. At Tuesday’s rally, Lula accused Bolsonaro of being “a Pharisee who seeks to manipulate the good faith of evangelical men and women who attend church.”
The current president’s systematic campaign to cast doubt on the electoral system has catapulted the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, made up of Supreme Court justices, into the center of political debate. And it has raised such alarm that a manifesto in defense of democracy has managed to unite bankers, businessmen, civil society representatives and activists. The scrutiny that electronic ballot boxes will be subjected to this time is maximum and Bolsonaro wants the armed forces to be involved in monitoring and even counting.
The inauguration of the TSE’s new president has resulted in this previously unpublished photo of Lula and Bolsonaro together and an also very morbid reunion, that of former PT President Dilma Rousseff and her successor Michel Temer, from the centre-right blaming the left for mollifying the PT’s traumatic eviction from power in 2016. If the trend in the polls continues and voters confirm it in October, the PT will be the first power in Latin America to return to power.