President insinuates victory for his rival would mean “returning to a land of thieves” and PT candidate demands he “lie less”
Brazil focused the end of its election campaign on a televised debate between seven of the 11 candidates running in Sunday’s presidential election. However, it did not lead to a debate of ideas, nor to an avalanche of brilliant proposals. Aggressiveness, personal attacks and accusations prevailed. It was a rough game in which no one played Neymar or Vinicius. It wasn’t a culture festival either. None of them write like Paulo Coelho or compose like Caetano Veloso. It was more like a boxing match.
In the final hours before a vote called for the Brazilians, the two main candidates, Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party), who aspires to re-election, and Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party), former president from 2003-2010. that they weren’t for frills. They were there, on O’Globo’s main set, winning the votes of the undecided, and they were trying to do it based on fouls. The Brazilian press believes that there was no candidate who kissed the canvas. And they give Lula a small points advantage over Bolsonaro. The other candidates, Ciro Gomes, Luiz Felipe d’Avila, Simone Tebet, Soraya Thronicke and Father Kelmon, barely count. Brazil will vote for two old friends who are on completely opposite poles.
“The Father is not a father, the Messiah is not the Messiah and de Novo is not a newcomer,” Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) deputy Samia Bomfim tweeted as the debate ended. With this he made a clear reference to Bolsonaro, whose middle name is Messiah; from Novo to D’Avila. And the father thing went for Kelmon, who clearly supported Bolsonaro, who called Lula an impostor and said he was in disguise, and with whom he had the biggest altercation to the point that the moderator of the debate took the microphones off both.
The candidate Thronicke (Brazil Union) also called Kelmon a festival father of the month of June. Kelmon didn’t have to be in the debate, but he took the place of Roberto Jefferson, whose candidacy was rejected, and legislation requires television stations to invite parties that have five federal delegates, as is the case with the PTB. Kelmon is a priest of a Peruvian congregation that is not recognized by the Orthodox Church in Brazil. For a while he belonged to the Workers’ Party.
The debate started at 10.30pm and ended at 1.50am (almost 7am in Spain). Bolsonaro always referred to Lula as the “ex-con”, trying to annoy him with the issue of corruption, an accusation that sent the former president 580 days in jail but was later found innocent. He also threw arrows at Lula on moral and religious issues, communism and disarmament. “The future of the country is at stake. We can’t go on in a land of thieves. The government that preceded us had no involvement or respect for the Brazilian family. It’s a government that wanted to impose gender ideology,” said Bolsonaro, who was more accurate in the first block of the debate, according to several analysts, in which he also insinuated that Lula had something to do with the murder of PT mayor Celso Daniel in 2002.
“If you appear here, President, lie less.” It was one of Lula’s reactions to his biggest rival’s attacks. “Be responsible, you have a 10-year-old daughter who watches the program you are doing,” he advised. Lula based the attacks on Bolsonaro on his disdain for the pandemic, which killed 685,000 Brazilians and the Senate blamed the president for half of those deaths. The candidate took the opportunity to reiterate his campaign messages, pledging to fight hunger, reduce inequality and revitalize the country’s development.
The hardest question Lula faced was posed by Ciro Gomes, basically third in the polls with 6% of the vote, far behind Lula (50%) and Bolsonaro (36%). “How do you explain that, after 14 years of PT governments, the five richest Brazilians amassed, as they still do, what the 100 million poorest Brazilians own? Is that what you want to repeat?’ asked Gomes. The answer was a chance to see statesman Lula: “Ciro, you should ask me how come in the PT government the poorest had a real increase of 80% in their income, while the rich had only 20%. You may be wondering how come we created 22 million jobs. You might wonder why we increased the minimum wage by 77%?
Lula da Silva bid farewell to the election campaign this Friday with a message of optimism by assuring “all of South America” and the majority of European countries are confident in his poll victory. The PT candidate even announced that eight EU leaders have already telephoned him to speak by phone on Monday if he regains the country’s presidency.
However, the majority support that Brazilians seem to be giving Lula da Silva in the presidential elections has not mirrored the same in the elections for the regional governor. Polls show that of the country’s 27 states, 11 favor a governor with ties to Bolsonaro and 10 are closer to the Workers’ Party leader. However, most of the candidates favored by citizens belong to the center-right spectrum. Of course, the PT could triumph for the first time in Sao Paulo.
Source: La Verdad
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