In addition to the president, governors, senators, deputies and other local positions are elected on October 2. Some characters.
Porn stars, an Olympic champion and even President Jair Bolsonaro’s interpreter for the deaf are some of the most colorful candidates for the National Congress ahead of the October 2 elections in Brazil.
There are nine days left for Brazilians to elect a president, a battle reduced to a hand in hand between Bolsonaro and former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the governors of the 27 states, a third of the 81 senators and 513 federal deputies, among other positions regional electives.
Options are not lacking among the nearly 30,000 applicationsthese exotic candidates are what are known in Brazil as “vote puxadores” (vote draggers), who are usually people unrelated to politics, but with enormous media coverage, which makes them an object of desire on the part of the political parties.
porn stars
In that bag there is everything this year. Elisa Sanches is the artistic name of a well-known star in the porn industry who, at 41, aspires to a seat in the Chamber of Deputies.
He is running for the conservative Patriota party and in one of his latest campaign videos he asks to expel from Congress “those who wear suits and ties” and do “nothing” against pedophilia and aggression against women.
The former porn actor known as Kid Bengala also intends to get a seat in the Lower House. Nearing his 68th birthday and with the support of Unión Brasil (centre-right), he assures that “he can’t stand that wrinkled Congress any longer” and that “the time has come to make Brazil grow.”
“I decided to innovate to put the ‘pau’ (in Portuguese, it means stick or a vulgar term to refer to the penis) in this mess. I’m going to go in with everything,” he says on his TikTok channel, where he has almost two million followers .
Hannah Maruci, a political scientist at the University of Sao Paulo (USP), recalls that this phenomenon has always existed in Brazilian elections and responds to a somewhat “aberrant” strategy of the parties to add the largest number of votes regardless of their origin.
As it is a proportional system in which several coefficients come into play, the parties prefer “famous” candidates, even if they have little or nothing to do with politics.
Along the same lines, Luiz Bueno, professor of Political Philosophy at the FAAP University Center, considers that the priority is to nominate “candidates well known by the public,” which in his opinion “compromises the quality of the elected representatives.”
Another attempt by the clown Tiririca
A classic in this section is the clown Tiririca, who seeks his fourth term in the Chamber of Deputies, this time with the right-wing Liberal Party, led by Bolsonaro.
Tiririca, who in 2010 became the most voted deputy in the country, this time appears dancing in a campaign video, in which he appeals to his electorate saying: “Vote for me, imbecile!”
The president’s own interpreter for deaf and dumb people has also joined the bandwagon of Bolsonarismo.
Few have heard Fabiano Guimaraes da Rocha in public, but his image has reached all corners of the country in the last three and a half years as he has accompanied the head of state to almost all his official acts as a sign language interpreter.
The marijuana candidate
In the ‘anything goes’ chapter, another example. Dário de Moura, a candidate for federal deputy for the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL), managed to make his catchy campaign song for the legalization of marijuana go viral on the networks.
The candidate assures that cannabis “is the solution”, “employment” and “money” for the public health and educational system and that for him “a drug is Bolsonaro”.
There are no athletes who want to make the leap into the political arena.
Wanderlei Silva is a recently retired mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter; Joel Santana is a veteran soccer coach; and Maurício Souza is a volleyball legend, world champion and Olympic gold medalist in Rio de Janeiro 2016. All three are candidates for federal deputy.
If they are successful, they could join Romário, a soccer legend who is seeking re-election to the position of senator, this time in the same party as Bolsonaro.
Source: EFE
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