Lula extends his advantage over Bolsonaro with almost 90% scrutinized in Brazil

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The count is about to end in Brazil. And it only remains to be seen if it is confirmed that the latest polls were right in considering the leader of the PT (Workers’ Party), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (77 years old), the favorite, with 53%, to win the presidential elections. from Brazil. For now, with 88% scrutinized, the leftist candidate has managed to come back and place himself ahead of the current president, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, with an increasingly clear advantage. The leader of the Liberal Party (PL) has been losing ground as the election has progressed. Thus, the veteran exmandatario is placed at the head with 50.5% of the support compared to 49.49% of his rival. Just over half a million votes.

In the first round, Lula remained in second place for much of the scrutiny and only took the lead when the percentage of votes counted exceeded 70%. The final result was 48.4% support for the former president, just three points more than Bolsonaro, who received 45.2%.

The second round of the elections was held in a climate of total uncertainty. D-day for Brazilians had finally arrived. The electoral campaign became endless, and exhausted many citizens. It was feared that abstention would exceed that of the first round (20.8%) and it was hoped that the vote of the undecided would finally decide who would emerge victorious. They were intense days, in which the two candidates were on the news at all hours. Days not exempt from violence, political and social. Days of personal accusations, of insults between the main candidates to govern the country for the next four years. Weeks that demonstrated the division of the country that this Sunday had to decide for two totally different models, in which they embraced love and hate, opposites in every way and in almost every aspect of life.

So immense is the existing polarization that it is difficult to identify a common point between the two candidates. There is none because one (Bolsonaro) represents the populism of the extreme right, which if he could, would remain in power forever, and the other (Lula) stands out for his unionist, progressive past and remarkable management when he led the country between 2003 and 2010, which deserved 87% approval.

The two candidates were as early risers as last October 2 when the first round of elections was held. Lula formalized her vote at the electoral college of the Firmino Correia de Araújo School, in Sao Bernardo do Campo, in Sao Paulo. Bolsonaro fulfilled the elections in a school in Rio de Janeiro. He then went to the airport to meet Flamengo, the team with the most fans in Brazil, which on Saturday won the Copa Libertadores (equivalent to the Champions League in Europe), and took the opportunity to take photos with the cup and then embarked on a helicopter trip the city with some players. Deep down, perhaps he thought that this was going to be the only celebration of his day. Bolsonaro, however, at that time of the morning was convinced of his victory at the polls: “We had good news in recent days,” he told the media. God willing, we will be victorious. Or rather, Brazil will emerge victorious.”

Lula, for his part, pointed out that it was the most important day of his life because he was running as a candidate and because he was convinced that the Brazilian people were going to vote “for a project in which democracy triumphs, because they chose the model of Brazil that wants and the model of life he wants to have. Lula insisted on the idea of ​​rebuilding Brazil, but in a way in which all Brazilians participated.

The leader of the Workers’ Party (PT) expressed his opinion about the video that went viral over the weekend and in which a deputy from the Liberal Party, Bolsonaro’s party, is seen chasing with a gun in his hand a a PT militant: “This is the Brazil we don’t want, we fight for a civilized country, where people respect each other and a deputy doesn’t need to carry a gun, pull it out and run after a citizen.”

The day was not without incidents, with the performance of the Federal Highway Police in the Northeast of the country standing out, where several voters in favor of Lula denounced that they had stopped their buses with the sole objective of preventing them from arriving on time to cast their vote. According to some media, the head of this Police on Saturday had posted a tweet that he later deleted in which he demanded the vote for Bolsonaro. Alexandre Moraes, president of the Superior Electoral Court, announced that he would open an investigation to find out if the arrest was due to routine controls or police abuse.

accept defeat

“The greatest fear of the current president’s campaign is the construction of a discourse for more forceful action if he is defeated,” says the lawyer and professor of Human Rights in Curitiba, Juliana Bertholdi. “At this moment it is not possible to understand which path Bolsonaro will choose in case of defeat: if he will limit himself to continuing to question the electoral process and its legitimacy, if he will seek explanations in the Supreme Electoral Tribunal or if he will gather his armed followers, which would be the worst. path, the most feared, but also the most unlikely”, adds Bertholdi.

However, in statements after the television debate on Friday night, Bolsonaro promised to respect the result of the elections even if he is not the winner. “There is not the slightest doubt. The one with the most votes wins. That is democracy », he said. However, throughout his campaign, Bolsonaro had said on several occasions that he would only accept the result if he considered the elections to be fair. Suspicions of his rejection of the result in case of defeat reappeared this week when his allies requested an investigation on the grounds that some radio stations in the northeast of the country did not publish his advertisements and were in favor of Lula. During the face-to-face meeting on Friday, organized by the O’Globo television channel, Bolsonaro came to feel like a victim: “The whole system is against me. The big television networks, one here (in reference to the one that was offering the debate) and even the Supreme Electoral Tribunal that wants to investigate me ».

The impression left by the debate is that Lula was firmer than on previous occasions and obtained a new victory on points. Expectations were centered on a Bolsonaro forced to go on the offensive to at least match Lula in the polls. But what all the analysts agreed on is that the last debate left a lot to be desired.

In Bolsonaro’s speech, insult predominated. If in the previous debates he always addressed Lula as a “convict”, on this occasion the term he used the most was “liar”. In the exchange of insults, both candidates came to use all the offensive adjectives, from “corrupt” to “scoundrel”, going through “criminal”, “thief”, and even the head of a criminal gang. It was not the debate that was expected and in that Lula was correct when he apologized for the lack of arguments and the quality of the meeting.

The tactic of the current president of Brazil was focused on asking his rival many questions. He did it so many times that Lula responded at one point: “I did not come to answer questions from Bolsonaro. He came to talk to the Brazilian people ».

The candidates recalled the achievements made during their mandates and did not give up rubbing against their mismanagement, although they did broach some uncomfortable issues, such as gender ideology and the legalization of drugs, clear accusations from Bolsonaro to Lula, yes, instead, he responded to the accusation of being in favor of abortion, which he flatly denied. The president attacked the previous mandates of his adversary saying that his government had inherited serious ethical, moral and economic problems from them.

300,000 deaths from covid

Both were recurrent on issues such as poverty and health, in which Lula feels very comfortable remembering that during his governments the country grew and inequality was reduced, while during the pandemic, Bolsonaro failed miserably. “One day you will pay for the avoidable death of more than 300,000 people -of the total of 680,000 deceased-” for not giving the vaccines at the right time, “Lula snapped at his adversary.

With this background scenario, one of the most populous countries in the world, with more than 215 million citizens, which has the highest unemployment rate in the region (13.2%) and one of the largest external debts (93 % of its GDP), Brazil faces momentous elections this Sunday. And also sensitive due to the fears generated by its current president, closer to the line of Donald Trump, who does not want to discuss the legalization of drugs, who does not accept gender ideology and who is convinced that his opponent today, Lula , represents the dark side, while he, Jair Messias Bolsonaro is the good side of life.

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