Left-wing ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and far-right outgoing head of state Jair Bolsonaro, favorites for Sunday’s presidential run in Brazil, exchanged hateful remarks during the last televised debate on Thursday 29 September evening, calling each other ” liar “ and of “corrupt”.
The first minutes of this debate – which tens of millions of viewers attended for more than three hours on the TV Globo channel – gave rise to violent passes of arms, three days before the most polarized election in history. recent from Brazil. Lula like Bolsonaro came out of their hinges and had to be called to order several times by the mediator.
Few concrete proposals
The tension then dropped a notch, but few concrete proposals were made by the seven candidates present (out of the eleven in the running), during a debate judged to be of a low level by the commentators.
From his first speech, Jair Bolsonaro, 67, accused Lula, 76, of having been the leader of a gang of “thieves”when the left ruled the country from 2003 to 2016, while treating it as ” liar “ et “traitor to the fatherland”.
An allusion to the Petrobras corruption scandal, for which the former trade unionist was imprisoned for eighteen months, in 2018 and 2019, before seeing his convictions overturned by the Supreme Court.
“It’s ugly to see a President of the Republic lying constantly”, retorted Lula, who in turn accused him of corruption. Citing in particular suspicions of embezzlement by Flavio Bolsonaro, the president’s eldest son, Lula said:
“How can you look in the mirror, when we see what happened under your government? The people will send you home on October 2! »
According to the latest opinion poll published by the Datafolha institute shortly before this third televised debate, the ex-unionist retains a comfortable advantage over Bolsonaro, with 48% of the voting intentions, against 34%.
Neymar support
Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT) is campaigning among Brazilians for the «Helpful vote» in order to give their voices to the old lion of Brazilian politics from this first round, with the support of singing stars like the singer Anitta.
But Jair Bolsonaro got strong support on Thursday: Brazilian soccer superstar Neymar, who openly declared his preference in a video posted on TikTok. Asked about his environmental policy, much criticized by environmentalists, the far-right president replied:
“We haven’t heard of any forest fires in the Amazon, other than the usual ones. »
But official data collected by satellite by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) showed Brazil recorded more fires in the planet’s largest rainforest in less than nine months than in all of 2021. .
The Agence France-Presse fact-checking unit noted several false information during the debate on Thursday evening. To defend himself against accusations of delay in the purchase of vaccines against Covid-19 in Brazil, President Bolsonaro said that“no country in the world had purchased a vaccine in 2020”while several countries had begun to immunize their populations by the end of that year.
Lula, for his part, claimed that he had been “cleared in twenty-six trials”but his convictions were canceled for formal defect, without the substance being analyzed.
During the two previous televised debates, President Bolsonaro had come under fire for his sexist attacks on one of the journalists who interviewed him.
After a performance deemed disappointing by commentators during the first debate – he had notably failed to defend himself against accusations of corruption launched by Jair Bolsonaro – Lula had not taken part in the second debate, citing an already very busy schedule. .
The electoral campaign on radio and television ended this Thursday at midnight, but meetings and the distribution of leaflets will remain authorized until Saturday evening, the day before the election.