Brazil: This is how Lula and Bolsonaro started the presidential campaign between ‘good and evil’

Brazil’s presidential campaigns began wrapped in an exchange of accusations between the two main candidates, religious allegories, fears of violence and a climate of extreme political polarization between the left and the extreme right.

On October 2, more than 148 million citizens in Brazil will elect president and vice president, 513 deputies and 27 senators. If none of the 12 registered president-vice president candidacies obtains more than 50% of the votes, there will be a second round on October 30.

The electoral contest is led by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the progressive former president and his former opponent, Gerardo Alckim, of the Brazilian Socialist Party, as his vice-presidential candidate lead the polls; and in second place is conservative President Jair Bolsonaro, who chose General Walter Souza Braga as his running mate.

Therefore, the attention was focused on their first formal events as candidates. And neither of them spared accusations against their rival, explains the journalist Cecilia González for RT.

«[Bolsonaro] tries to manipulate the good faith of evangelical men and women who go to church to talk about faith and spirituality, he tells them lies about Lula, about Lula’s wife, about the workers, about indigenous people and Afro-descendants. If there is someone possessed by the devil, that is Bolsonaro», affirmed Lula during the first act of the sixth presidential campaign that he runs in his life.

The 76-year-old former president had to make last-minute changes, since the start-up was planned in a factory located in the south of the city of São Paulo, but the Federal Police warned that there were not enough security conditions, one of the issues that most concern the people who organize the campaign due to the fear that Lula could be the victim of some aggression by supporters of Bolsonaro.

Because of this fear, the event was moved to the Volkswagen plant located in Sao Bernardo do Campo, in the metropolitan area of São Paulo, and which had a symbolic charge to it, since it was there that Lula began his trade union and political career in the 1970s, which decades later, would make him president.

During the event, Lula insisted on denouncing Bolsonaro. «He is a creator of lies and a denier. He did not shed a tear for the orphans left by the pandemic. He is a genocide», stated Lula in a speech in which he also made concrete proposals on taxes, employment, wages and the economy in general.

Prayers for Brazil

Bolsonaro’s inaugural event for re-election also had symbolic weight, since he held it in Juiz de Fora, the municipality where he was stabbed in 2018 and where he said he had been reborn.

“We know about the fight of good against evil”, said the president, putting a religious meaning to his campaign, something that he has replicated throughout his entire political career. In fact, his wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, led a prayer that she described as part of «a universal prayer».

Bolsonaro took the opportunity to insist that, if Lula wins, churches will be closed, people will not be allowed to carry weapons, and «gender ideology» will be promoted. In addition, he again rejected the possibility of combating «fake news», knowing that he is accused of being one of its main disseminators.

On the other hand, he reiterated his already well-known denialist positions, considering that the measures decreed in some Brazilian states during the coronavirus pandemic were like «small dictatorships».

The first official day of his campaign was accompanied by the song in which Bolsonaro is defined as «the captain of the people who is going to win again, who is from God, defends the family, there has been no one like him, he is the savior of our Brazil, the one who defends the country, he has our flag in his heart. It is in our hands, we have the opportunity once again to take care of our people and shout: Brazil above all, God above all”.

In anticipation of a possible defeat, Bolsonaro has questioned the transparency of the elections and has spoken of anticipated «fraud». For this reason, he was the only guest who did not get up from his seat or applaud Alexandre de Moraes, the new president of the Electoral Court of Brazil who defended the democratic system on Wednesday when he took office.

“Freedom of expression is not freedom of aggression or destruction of democracy and institutions, dignity and honor; it is not freedom to propagate hate speech, it does not allow the propagation of ideas contrary to the constitutional order and the rule of law, even in periods of electoral propaganda”, warned de Moraes.
The scenario

The electoral campaigns in Brazil began with polls that agree that Lula leads with voting intentions ranging from 38% to 45%, which would still be insufficient to win in the first round.

Meanwhile, Bolsonaro has 32% to 38% of the preferences. In a distant third place, with figures ranging from 6% to 10%, is Ciro Gomes, candidate of the progressive Partido Democrático Laboralista (Democratic Labor Party).

Among the candidates who do not reach 5% of voting intention are the deputies José María Eymael (Democracia Cristiana – Christian Democracy); and Roberto Jefferson (Partido Laborista Brasileño – Brazilian Labor Party) and senators Simone Tebet (Movimiento Democrático Brasileño – Brazilian Democratic Movement) and Soraya Thronicke (Unión Brasil – Brazil Union).

Also included are politicians who until now have not held any public office, such as Luz Felipe D’Avila (Partido Nuevo – New Party); Sofía Manzano (Partido Comunista Brasileño – Brazilian Communist Party); Leonardo Péricles (Unidad Popular – Popular Unity), Pablo Marçal (Partido Republicano del Orden Social –  Republican Party of Social Order) and Vera Lucía (Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores Unificado – Unified Socialist Workers Party).