An evangelical mega-church bishop who once called Catholics “demons” was elected mayor of Rio de Janeiro on Sunday in nationwide municipal elections in Brazil.
It was the second round of balloting for city halls in Latin America’s biggest country and confirmed the trend seen in Oct. 2 polls, which ended in humiliation for the former governing Workers’ Party.
In the first round, the Workers’ Party lost about two-thirds of the mayor’s posts it had won in 2012 elections, including Brazil’s largest city, Sao Paulo.
The drubbing underlined the decline of a party founded by former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and came after the removal from office of his handpicked successor, Dilma Rousseff, in an impeachment trial in August.
The biggest winner emerging from the elections has been the PMDB of Brazilian President Michel Temer and allied parties, especially the PSDB.
“The Temer government’s base came out with a big win,” political scientist Fernando Schuler said in Sao Paulo.
Losses by the Workers’ Party in heartland municipalities, including San Bernardo do Campo in Sao Paulo, “reinforced the tendency seen in the first round — a defeat for the former government’s political bloc,” Schuler said.
The highlight of Sunday’s run-off elections was a battle for Rio’s post-Olympics future between socialist Marcelo Freixo and evangelical Marcelo Crivella, from the Brazilian Republican Party (PRB).
RICH UNCLE
Crivella — a bishop in the giant Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, founded by his billionaire uncle — won easily, 59.4 percent to 40.6 percent, final results showed.
He has promised to bring law and order to Rio, a city beset by high crime.
Despite billions of US dollars in investments for the Olympic Games this year the city has ramshackle infrastructure, including a lack of basic sanitation for many in impoverished favelas.
Casting his vote in Copacabana, Crivella said he would dedicate himself “above all to health, education, transport and public safety.”
Evangelical politicians are advancing steadily nationwide, helped by disgust over revelations of systemic corruption among leading politicians and executives during the Workers’ Party era.
The evangelical message has also taken root among poor people, who earlier would have been expected to vote more along leftist lines.
Several high-profile cases of evangelical leaders also caught up in corruption allegations have yet to damage the movement.
Crivella himself faces controversy.
He has had to work hard to distance himself from statements he made in a book he wrote in 1999 in which he described Roman Catholics as “demonic” and claimed that Hindus drank their children’s blood.
The 59-year-old has also described homosexuality as evil and African religions as worshipping “evil spirits.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was