The PT leader campaigned in a favela. And the current president lashed out at the governments of the region, including Colombia and Chile.
A little over two weeks before the ballot in Brazil, Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro accelerate their campaigns in search of voters to overcome the long-awaited 50% barrier, each with their own particular style.
While the leader of the PT promises to recover the prosperity he reaped during his presidencies, the current president targeted Argentina, Chile and Colombia, and warned that if he loses, the “communist scum” will come.
In an attempt to reverse the defeat he suffered in the first round in Rio de Janeiro, Lula led an event on Tuesday at Belford Roxo, a stronghold of supporters of the current president.
Despite the fact that he won the first round with 48.4% of the votes compared to 43.2% for his rival, Lula lost in Rio de Janeiro: He got 40.68% of the votes, compared to 51.09% for Bolsonaro.
Belford Roxo is one of the eleven municipalities that make up the so-called Baixada Fluminense, a violent poverty belt that surrounds the city of Rio de Janeiro, which has 2.5 million voters and in which Bolsonaro obtained 55% of the votes on Sunday.
Both in the electoral march that he carried out through the main streets of Belford Roxo and in the press conference that he later granted, Lula recalled the important social investments made during his Government in the Baixada Fluminense and promised to strengthen social programs in the region.
He also promised to boost job creation by strengthening the shipbuilding industry with the reimplantation of the policy that forced the oil company Petrobras, the largest company in Brazil, to privilege Brazilian shipyards in contracting the construction of its marine platforms and ships. .
Lula recalled that when he took office in 2003, the Brazilian shipbuilding industry had 3,000 workers and that when he left office that number rose to 82,000.
“We are going to recover the Brazilian naval industry, to encourage private initiative to make investments in the sector and to attract foreign capital investment. We want foreign capital here,” he said.
He also expressed his “moral commitment” to remove Rio de Janeiro from the police pages of the newspapersin an allusion to the high homicide and crime rates that make Baixada Fluminense one of the most violent regions in the country.
Lula visited Belford Roxo dressed in white and not the typical red in the Workers’ Party acts after the decision of the largest left-wing formation in Latin America to make it clear that the former president’s project is of a broad coalition with left and center parties.
Bolsonaro, Argentina and the “communist scum”
Bolsonaro, for his part, visited the sanctuary of Our Lady of Aparecida, on the occasion of the festivity of this virgin, national patron saint, and took advantage of an event in Rio Grande do Sul, a state that borders Argentina, and referred to our country to warn about the dire scenario that awaits Brazil if Lula wins.
“We have a date ahead that will mark the future of all and in which we must decide if we want a free market or State interference, if we want a country aligned with the first world or with the communist scum“He said in a gym in the city of Pelotas.
Bolsonaro maintains a tense relationship with President Alberto Fernández, who in turn is very close to Lula, and insisted that when the last elections were held in Argentina he predicted that the victory of Peronism would cause a economic “disaster”.
“So it was, and We are sorry for our Argentine brothers”who “today follow the path of Venezuela, the richest country in the world in oil and whose people are in a worse situation than our Haitian brothers,” Bolsonaro said.
He also warned that “what happens in those countries, in Chile, Colombia and in our Nicaragua“, it can also happen in Brazil.
Source: EFE