A former deputy ally of the current president surrenders after attacking several police officers with grenades and shots
Brazil has less than a week to choose who will preside over the country for the next four years. The second round will take place next Sunday, October 30. The polls predict a technical tie between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (president between 2003 and 2010), leader of the Workers’ Party; and Jair Bolsonaro, the current president of the Liberal Party. In an election campaign of increasing polarization, both candidates struggle to pull the votes of the undecided and abstain.
Lula won the first round on Oct. 2 with 48.4% of the vote, compared to 43.2% for Bolsonaro, who took much better results than the polls predicted. In theory, Lula starts out as the favourite: the polls give him 49% of the vote for 45% of his rival. Taking into account the margin of error and especially the precedent of the first round, it is practically a technical draw.
In the latter part of the campaign, and when there is only one televised debate left, both candidates are now focusing their efforts on convincing that bag of undecided and abstaining voters. They make up 11% of the electorate. In the first round, which also included governors, deputies, representatives of regional assemblies and a third of the Senate, the abstention was 20.9%.
It also seems fundamental what the voters who chose a different option in the first round decide to do. Center-right Senator Simone Tebet (third on 2nd with 4.16% of support) and Labor Party member Ciro Gomes (fourth, 3.0%) have already asked for the vote for Lula.
References from popular culture have also mobilized. This is the case, for example, with footballers of the size of Neymar, Ronaldinho Gaúcho, Romario or Rivaldo; they have all come out to ask for the vote for Bolsonaro. However, the artistic class and culture in general, led by the main television actors and dedicated musicians such as Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, Daniela Mercury or Anitta, have already spoken out in favor of Lula.
Tension was the general tone throughout the campaign, with blatant accusations between the candidates. In the days leading up to the first round, a Lula supporter was murdered in a bar. The ‘fake news’ has played a major role in the extreme polarization, the highest in decades. The Superior Electoral Court has ordered more than 20,000 fake news to be removed from the network in the past two months.
In this climate, an incident in Comendador Levy Gasparian, 140 kilometers north of Rio de Janeiro, did not go unnoticed last Sunday. Former deputy Roberto Jefferson, an ally of Bolsonaro in Congress, threw a grenade and shot two police officers who wanted to arrest him for skipping house arrest and insulting a magistrate. The officers have been taken to hospital and are doing well.
After the incident, Bolsonaro expressed his solidarity with the police and confirmed that the former deputy, who turned himself in to authorities, deserves “bandit” treatment. Jefferson has been under house arrest since 2021. He was convicted in 2013 of profiting from a corruption case during the Lula administration, which he supported in the past.
Source: La Verdad
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